Elderly people, physical therapy services and human resources: current and future challenges

Abstract

The aging process implementation in Portugal, and the consequent increase in the number of elderly people is evident and constitutes an increasing process. Undeniably, the elderly people are the main users of health services and specifically physiotherapy services. The economic and financial crisis that affected Portugal, has imposed restrictions on the health system and specifically on the National Health Service (NHS) (1). Considering this scenario, we have put as a guiding question: In Portugal, physiotherapy health services and human resources included in the health system at NUTS III regional level, and essentially in the NHS, are proportional to the number of elderly people and respond to their current and future needs? [NUTS III - Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) with level III corresponding to the territorial division constituted by 30 regions, according to the division of 2013] We aim to understand the current and future numbers of the elderly people at the regional level (NUTS III); also aim to know the current number of physiotherapy services and human resources at the same regional level; and aim to prospective the future physical therapy services and human resources, considering the health political trends related to services and human resources; and assess if these services and human resources respond to the needs of the current and future elderly people. For this purpose, we performed a statistical analysis at the regional level NUTS III, considering the indicators - number of elderly people and physical therapy services and human resources. We used the data from the Statistics National Institute, the Health Regulatory Body, the Portuguese Physiotherapists Union and the Portuguese Association of Physiotherapists. The results showed that at the regional level (NUTS III), physiotherapy services and human resources are scarce and there is no proportionality between the number of elderly people and the physiotherapy services and human resources. With the increasing number of elderly people and the restrictive political trend, we assume that, if the political trends continues, proportionality will remain non-existent. In this way, we conclude that current and future physiotherapy services and human resources do not respond to the needs of the current and future elderly population, and there is a need to adapt physiotherapy services and human resources to the current and future demographic reality, in order to achieve better levels of healthy life expectancy (2). References 1. Rodrigues, T. F., Martins, M. R. O.(Coordenadores). Envelhecimento e saúde. Prioridades políticas num Portugal em mudança. Lisboa. CEPESE/Instituto Hidrográfico. 2014 2. Coelho, C. I. Leão S. S. Envelhecimento e saúde em Portugal. Práticas e desafios num cenário de aumento da população idosa (1974-2031) [DoctoralThesis]. Lisbon: Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; 2017