ARGENTINA

On September 22, through Resolution 2546/2021, the Ministry of Health created the National Health Quality Plan 2021-2024. The objective of the measure is to “strengthen the stewardship and governance of the healthcare system to develop a culture of quality and promote sustained quality improvement in the provision of comprehensive healthcare services.”

Among other points, the resolution creates the National Advisory Council on Quality in Health. This council will have the following functions: To advise with respect to the formulation of policies that promote the implementation of the National Health Quality Plan 2021-2024, to collaborate in the supervision of the general implementation of the plan and the implementation within the spaces they represent and to propose the constitution of specific commissions or working groups to address the various actions that promote the realization of the Plan’s objectives.

The creation of the plan arises from the diagnosis that the health system has “a great segmentation and fragmentation that hinders access to quality health care services, compromises results and leads to an inefficient use of available resources and care models often do not respond adequately to the differentiated health needs of individuals and communities”.  In turn, they consider that the fragmentation of health services “exacerbates the difficulties in accessing comprehensive and quality services, with a first level of care with little capacity for resolution, which translates into inefficiencies”.