Programas para promoção da saúde e prevenção de riscos e doenças : uma revisão sobre sua efetividade na redução dos custos assistenciais

Abstract

In the last few years, the care costs of supplementary health companies have been suffering an exponential growth, which leads to a debate over methods to control them. Among these methods, health promotion emerges as the most promising, but without sufficient evidence to ensure it as a primary resource. The present study sought to identify a correlation between Health Promotion Programs and Prevention of Risks and Diseases with the reduction of the care costs, aiming to improve the performance of these programs by their adoption from supplementary health entities. For that, a bibliographic review was carried out in the scientific literature in order to find and evaluate researches that applied this correlation, where the researchers' methods varied from case studies, with or without mathematical evidence, to other bibliographic reviews. The study found a large, but insufficient, acceptance by the authors, where a few demonstrated mathematical evidences corroborating a positive correlation, but many presented good favorable arguments, even if it is subjective arguments. Even not being able to affirm with exactness the true effectiveness of Health Promotion and Prevention of Risks and Diseases in reduction of care costs, lacking more case studies on the subject, mainly in national scenario, the study showed that this is an acceptable proposal to encourage companies to increase the number of accession to the programs, in addition to improve the health of the population, possibly reduce the care costs of supplementary healthcare companies.