The role of the EPS and the changes they would have in the health reform

One of the issues that generates the most doubts in the health reform project is what will happen to the EPS, which currently operate in the country. Will they disappear?

(Health reform ratifies the fears of the EPS).

Although President Gustavo Petro stated that they will not be eliminated and that the initiative contemplates a mixed model in which the Health Promotion Entities they must be adapted, for many experts this new model would change the functions that the EPS have today, which would somehow lead to their disappearance, as they are known today.

In a Live with Portfolio, the former Minister of Health, Augusto Galán, explained that the main function of the EPS, is the comprehensive management of health risks, that is, to guarantee this right, both in its coverage and in the provision of the service for users.

Given this, the reform project would remove this function from the Health Promotion Entities to convert them into lending entities and not promoters. In other words, they would enter the system to provide health services but not to manage risks, a function that would pass into the hands of the State, through other administrators such as the national ADRES or the health secretaries, sectional ADRES, regional funds, and Primary Centers. of Health (CAPS) in the departments of the country.

(Health reform: socialization began in Congress).

This is what in the reform is known as the territorialization of the EPS, which also proposes that they concentrate their operations in cities and departments where they have the largest number of affiliates and the greatest organization of the provision of services, thus freeing them from geographical dispersion .

For Professor Paul Rodríguez, a professor at the Universidad del Rosario, one of the concerns generated by this model proposed in the health reform is that “We will not know who to complain to”.

“Currently users have clarity on where to complain. But with the mess that would be created, we won’t know who to complain to. At this time one can file a guardianship or make a formal request to the EPS and have a mourner, while the new model poses a lot of difficulties for us “said the expert in the dialogue with Portfolio.

(This would be the transition to the health system proposed by the reform).

Acemi, the EPS union, recently warned that in the health reform project no one would be assuming the responsibility and function of managing health risk.

On the contrary, the responsibility for forming, coordinating and articulating the network of services would be transferring to the health secretariats of the departmental and municipal territorial entities.

He also added that “To say that the EPS are health service providers is equivalent to eliminating them. In addition, that keeping the name of the EPS does not mean maintaining its role as insurers and that the project fragments its functions and divides them among different entities, which could generate great chaos within the system.”

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