Health care in Colombia

Health care in Colombia refers to the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well being through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions in the Republic of Colombia.

Law 100 of 1993
The law 100 of 1993 stablished a new legislation of health care in Colombia. This law is divided in four books
 * First book: About Pension regulations.
 * Second book: About the general system of healthcare
 * Third book: About Occupational safety and health
 * Fourth book: About Complementary social services

The reform of the colombian healthcare had three main goals:
 * The achievement of an antitrust policy, to avoid the statal health monopoly.
 * The incorporation of private health providers to the healthcare market
 * The creation of a subsidiated healthcare sector, covering the poorest population.

The general principles of the law determine that the healthcare is a public service, which must be granted in conditions of proficiency, universality, social solidarity and participation. The article 153 of the law determines that the health insurance must be compulsory, the health providers must have administrative autonomy, and the health users must have free choice of health provider.

Glossary of Acronyms

 * SISBEN: Acronym for Sistema de Identificación de Beneficiarios de Subsidios Sociales (system of identification for social subsidies beneficiaries).

EPS: Entidades Promotoras de Salud. (Health promoting Entrepreneurships)

EPS-S: Entidades Promotoras de Salud Subsidiadas. (Subsidied Health promoting entrepreneurship)s

IPS: Instituciones Prestadoras de Servicios de Salud. (Health providing institutions)

ESE: Empresas Sociales del Estado. (Statal social organizations)

ESS: Empresas Solidarias de Salud. (Health solidarity organizations)

CCF: Cajas de Compensación Familiar. (Family welfare financial institutions)

POS: Plan Obligatorio de Salud. (Compulsory plan of health)

Fondo SYGA or FOSYGA: Fondo de Solidaridad y Garantía. (Fund of Solidarity and guarantees)

MAPIPOS: Manual de Procedimientos y Actividades del POS. (POS-related procedures and activities handbook)

SOAT: Seguro Obligatorio de Accidentes de Tránsito (Compulsory Auto insurance

SISBEN
The national system of identification of beneficiaries for social subsidy clasiffies the people according with their socio-economic level into 6 strates, being strate 1 homeless people and extreme poverty and strate 6 the highest level of richness

Most of the social subsidies and public health programs are focused in the 1 and 2 strates. So, the fraudulent expedition of low level Sisben carnets are a major problem in the healthcare system, since the regional politicians are often accused of providing these carnets to not really poor people in exchange for votes. This wrong identification of beneficiaries prevents the real poor people to receive the subsidies designed for them.

EPS
The National Health Oversight (Superintendencia de Salud) defines which organizations may qualify as EPS according to a number or requirements, including infrastructure, capital, number of users, functionality and covering. The function of the EPS is to sell health service packages to the public, and contract such services with the healthcare-providing institution. However, many EPS have been implicated with insufficiency of the operative network, corruption and denying of basic services.

Health professionals and the Heathcare system
The health professionals had little or no participation in the development of the reform to the healthcare system. So, basic principles such as cost-benefit, healcare quality, and implications in the professional health practice were misjudged. The reform of the health system restricted severely the oportunity of the health professionals to hire their services privately, phenomenon that caused a heavy loss of income for the average health practice.