{"id":4150,"date":"2015-04-06T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T09:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/?p=740"},"modified":"2025-12-01T13:23:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T19:23:44","slug":"policy-changes-brazil-invites-foreign-investment-to-private-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/ghi-analysis\/policy-changes-brazil-invites-foreign-investment-to-private-healthcare\/","title":{"rendered":"Policy Changes \u2013 Brazil Invites Foreign Investment to Private Healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pnl_lft\">\n<p>Brazil\u2019s President, Dilma Rousseff, announced in January that her\u00a0government would allow foreign investment in the private healthcare\u00a0sector for the first time. The government\u2019s decision is driven in part by\u00a0the need to respond to the public discontent that erupted during protests in June 2013. Protesters demanded, among others, improvements to the\u00a0public health system, especially to address the needs of lower-\u00ad\u2010income\u00a0citizens.<\/p>\n<p>In response to the protests, the government announced plans to increase\u00a0the number of doctors by hiring foreign staff and by requiring medical\u00a0students to work for two years, rather than one, in the public health care\u00a0system before graduating. This most recent opening announced in\u00a0January marks a significant turning point for Brazil with broad implications\u00a0for investment in the country\u2019s healthcare sector.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Increased healthcare spending<\/strong> \u2013 The outlook for Brazil\u2019s\u00a0health care sector, already promising, has now become more\u00a0attractive. Spending had increased in recent years\u2014from 8.9\u00a0percent of GDP in 2011 to 9.1 percent in 2013 and is now expected\u00a0to continue growing with total spending on health care projected to\u00a0rise to $255.5 billion by 2017.9<\/li>\n<li><strong>Foreign firms to play in the hospital market<\/strong> \u2013 President\u00a0Rousseff announcement has the potential to provoke a game-\u00ad\u2010\u00a0changing restructuring of the private health care market. Foreign\u00a0health insurance companies have been able to operate in Brazil\u00a0since the late 1990s, and since 2012 many have taken over Brazilian\u00a0firms, with the consolidation likely to continue.10 Hospitals and\u00a0clinics, however, had remained off limits to foreign investors. This\u00a0will now change and the first signs of interest from potential buyers\u00a0have emerged, which is unsurprising: Brazil\u2019s concentrated hospital\u00a0market and their revenue streams\u2014outpatient care services\u00a0generate up to ninety percent of hospitals\u2019 revenue\u2014make for rich\u00a0pickings.11 Private equity investors are already looking to enter the\u00a0market, with The Carlyle Group reportedly in negotiations to\u00a0purchase the healthcare network Rede D\u2019Or, the largest privately\u00a0owned and independently operated healthcare system in the\u00a0country.12<\/li>\n<li><strong>Protocol standardization \u2013<\/strong> Foreign investment in Brazil\u2019s hospitals is likely to accelerate the professionalization of hospital management practices, with the potential for significant improvements in the quality and cost efficiency of care. Many hospitals in Brazil are hampered by a lack of standardized processes as well as outdated management practices, governance structures, and IT systems. For example, only a few of Brazil\u2019s hospitals follow diagnostic protocols, drug guidelines, while many executive decisions appear to be based on intuition rather than data.13<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"pnl_rt\">\n<ul>\n<li>Most hospitals still do not use standard management reports, key\u00a0performance indicators, fixed-\u00ad\u2010cost evaluations, and other common\u00a0management tools to measure their performance. There is much\u00a0scope to improve performance and outcomes with smart investments\u00a0in IT systems, management skills, and tools to monitor, control, and\u00a0report key performance indicators.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sustainability of the SUS<\/strong> \u2013 In time, significant investments in\u00a0Brazil\u2019s private healthcare sector has the potential to shift the burden\u00a0of care away from the public health care system, the Sistema \u00danico da\u00a0Sa\u00fade (SUS), which could make a big difference in gradually stabilizing\u00a0the public system\u2019s long-\u00ad\u2010term financial health. The SUS is funded \u00a0through federal and local taxes and employer and employee\u00a0contributions; it is financially stressed: around 75 percent of the\u00a0population depends on it, but only 47 percent of all health care\u00a0spending comes from public funding.14<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brazil\u2019s President, Dilma Rousseff, announced in January that her government would allow foreign investment in the private healthcare sector for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":19365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[151,152,153,154,155,156,157,158,159,160,161,162,163,164,165],"class_list":{"0":"post-4150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ghi-analysis","8":"tag-brazil-hospital-data","9":"tag-brazil-market-intelligence-healthcare","10":"tag-brazilian-hospital-database","11":"tag-brazilian-hospitals-data","12":"tag-brazilian-hospitals-market-research","13":"tag-healthcare-market-intelligence","14":"tag-healthcare-market-research-latin-america","15":"tag-home-healthcare-brazil","16":"tag-hospital-database-brazil","17":"tag-hospital-equipment-brazil","18":"tag-market-intelligence-latin-america","19":"tag-market-research-brazil-healthcare","20":"tag-number-of-hospitals-in-brazil","21":"tag-number-of-private-hospitals-in-brazil","22":"tag-number-of-public-hospitals-in-brazil"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27728,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions\/27728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}