​05/07/2019

Press Bulletin No. 082, 2019

- For the first time ever, a government puts a ceiling on the amounts charged by entities for the provision, to Colombians, of technologies and procedures not financed within the capitation payment unit.

Bogotá DC, May 7, 2019. The Ministry of Health and Social Protection continues to develop actions to ensure that Colombians have a stronger system and sector: it has just issued Resolution 1019, 2019, which facilitates access of citizens to more medicine, while making public spending more efficient.

The Resolution, said Diana Isabel Cárdenas, Deputy Minister of Social Protection, establishes the maximum values of collection and recovery that entities can request from the national government for medicine and health technologies that are not funded by the capitation payment unit (UPC).

The Ministry applied a technical formula to fairly determine, in the administrative act, the maximum amounts charged by EPSs and IPSs for relevant therapeutic groups. Previously, the Deputy Minister pointed out, there was a pronounced difference among those amounts. For example, for the same component of a medication administered to a patient, one EPS charged the health system $20 (pesos) per milligram and another charged $5.

"We started with a group of 50 relevant ingredients and by next July we expect to have all of them, in order to reduce the difference in collections to the system for those active ingredients that are prescribed to Colombians for their health treatments," said Deputy Minister Cárdenas, who added that some 1,600 drugs are part of this first group.

The group of ingredients included in the Resolution are some that are used to control cholesterol, others are anti-flu and analgesics.

This is the first time ever this measure has been implemented, which also seeks to make public spending more efficient, so that more and more health resources are allocated for Colombians to have greater access and quality in these services, a fundamental basis of equity.

This decision applies to EPSs, IPSs and the other recovery institutions that provide their affiliates with medicine and services that are not financed by the UPC, albeit being delivered using the Mipres technological tool and charged to the Resource Administrator of the General Health Care Social Security System (Adres).

The UPC is the annual amount recognized by the national government for each of the people affiliated to the General Health Care Social Security System (SGSSS) to cover the Health Benefits Plan (PBS), in the contributory and subsidized regimes.