The Impact of COVID-19 on the Performance of Primary Health Care Service Providers in a Capitation Payment System: A Case Study from Poland

In Poland, as in many other countries, the use of capitation payment schemes in primary health care is popular. Despite this popularity, the subject literature discusses its role in decreasing the quality of primary medical services. This problem is particularly important during COVID-19, when medical entities provide telehealth services to patients. The objective of the study is to examine the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of the primary health care providers in Poland under a capitation payment scheme. In this study the authors use data from interviews with personnel of medical entities and financial and administrative reports of primary health care providers in order to identify how this crisis situation impacts the performance of primary health care entities, under capitation payment system. The performance indicators include both the financial and quality measures. Selected to the case study primary health care service providers significantly improved their profitability due to considerable costs savings and reduction of services provided to patients in a time of COVID-19 pandemic. Capitation payment system proved to be inefficient, in the studied pandemic period, in terms of the services provided by primary health care service providers to patients and the funds paid to them, in exchange, by the government entities.

Women’s alcohol consumption in a Primary Health Care service

ABSTRACT Objective: To identify alcohol consumption patterns in people cared by a Primary Health Care service and verify the association between the patterns and the variables of the sample. Method: Our observational study used both the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test instrument and a questionnaire with socio-demographic, clinical, and behavioral questions for data collection. We carried out the descriptive and univariate analysis with Kendall and Kruskal-Wallis correlation tests. We introduced variables with p ≤ 0.2 values in the multiple logistic regression – Mann-Whitney test. Results: The sample of the study was constituted by 561 women. The analysis results indicated relevant influence for higher patterns of consumption: not having a partner, not having a religion, smoking and drug habits, and having arterial hypertension. Besides that, within each additional year in women’s age, the alcohol consumption decreases. Conclusion: We endorsed data that female alcohol consumption is presenting a tendency to increase especially among younger women, this information is essential for the promotion of Primary Health Care.