Gobierno de Aragón, Health Department (GOBARA), Spain
The Autonomous Region of Aragón comprises three provinces: Zaragoza, Huesca and Teruel, and 729 municipalities. 50% of the population lives in the regional capital city of Zaragoza while the remaining 50% is sparsely spread among the rest of the municipalities.
Population density in Aragón is 24,9 habitants/kmē, one of the lowest in Spain and in the whole of the EU.
It is not necessary to note that together with training, one of the essential services is health care. Moreover, it is necessary to find a solution able to balance the demand in quality health care (more and better services) with the necessary limitation in the growth of resources.
The Health Department of the Autonomous Government of Aragón is an autonomous body within the Government of Aragón. It has the following functions and responsibilities:
Overall management and co-ordination of the existing healthcare resources in the territory of Aragón;
Primary Care and Secondary Care management, including homecare
Promotion and protection of individual and collective health.
In 2002, this Department took over responsibility for healthcare in the Region from INSALUD.
When the responsibility for the 8 hospitals still run by INSALUD was transferred from Central Government to the Autonomous Government of Aragón, they were included in the general ICT revamping plan. This implied the installation of two separate applications: the Administrative System and the Hospital Management System. There are a number of departmental applications integrated with the management systems for nursing, dietetics, pharmacy, pathologic anatomy, radiology, surgery, and several other areas. Currently, these systems are being rolled out to 4 more hospitals which were already under Government of Aragón?s responsibility before the transfer of responsibilities from INSALUD was completed.
The Primary Care set-up comprises 30 Health Centres, 20 of which were equipped with state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure as part of the aforementioned technological revamping plan. The health map as set forth in the 207/2003 Decree, dated 22nd July 2003, subdivides healthcare into eight functional areas. Each one of them cuts across the various levels of care (i.e. Primary Care, Secondary Care, Mental Health and Socio-sanitary assistance. Moreover, there is an Emergency Coordination Centre (061) for all the territory.
Emergencies are handled by a single Co-ordination Centre (061) serving the whole Region
