O efeito do envelhecimento populacional nos custos de internação da saúde pública: uma análise de decomposição no Ceará

Abstract

The demographic and epidemiological transitions propagate impacts in several areas of a society. In health, costs suffer a direct effect due mainly to the increase in the elderly population, because they require greater care and the greater demand for correlates services. The objective of the study is to measure the impact of aging on public health hospitalization costs. For this purpose a database of the DATASUS hospital information system was used in the year 2010 and data from the Population Projection updated by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in 2013. The objective of the study is to measure the impact of aging on public health hospitalization costs. For this, a database of the DATASUS hospital information system was used in 2010 and data from the Population Projection updated by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in 2013. It was decided to use the method of cost decomposition in the state of Ceará, in comparison with the Northeast and Brazil, verifying the behavior of the variables (i) average cost of hospitalization, (ii) frequency of use and (iii) number of residents in each locality, which make up the total cost. In order to evaluate only the impact of population aging, the same exercise was carried out for Ceará and Brazil, assuming a more aged structure for Brazil in two future moments, taking into account that Ceará follows the same tendency of Aging than Brazil. The study showed in the simulation scenarios that, with the change of the current structure by an older one, the estimated cost difference is much higher than that found in the comparison with Brazil with the current age structure, clearly noticing the predominance of the composition effect increase in costs.