In December 2021, HCD Economics completed the final stages of the legal process to establish an employee paying agent in Spain, the first growth within the European Union (EU). EU health policy focuses on protecting and improving health, giving equal access to modern and efficient healthcare for all Europeans, and coordinating any serious health threats involving more than one EU country. Disease prevention and response play a big part in the EU’s public health focus (european-union.europa.eu).
Health economic research and analysis, drawing upon data collected from real world evidence has a pivotal role in decisions that impact upon patients in the EU, in terms of access to modern and efficient healthcare. Equally multi-country real world evidence studies, such as those designed and implemented by HCD Economics can inform understanding of serious health threats. The beneficial impact on healthcare expenditure of effective disease prevention and response is optimally demonstrated by budget impact modelling, another area of expertise employed by HCD Economics.
Thus the expansion into Spain, within the HCD Economics family is directly aligned to EU health policy and research undertaken by the Spanish team will inform healthcare decisions made within that policy framework to continue the global commitment HCD Economics has made to patient and public involvement and engagement ultimately resulting in access for patients to the most appropriate, modern and efficient healthcare.
As a devolved organisation with a number of key experts working from home, based in other member countries of the EU the new Spanish operation can interact with this network as assignments demand, leveraging a European health economic community that can respond to the needs of patients across all EU member countries. Writing in the latest ‘The State of Health in the EU’ report, published by the EU Directorate –General for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis (former EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety) states ‘….the cost of inaction in health can be disastrous, in terms of human lives and economic impact’…how can we act?...It all starts with an evidence based approach. This is exactly the objective of ‘The State of Health in the EU’. It is an infrastructure to make health information, expertise and best practices easily accessible to policy makers and policy influencers’.
Idaira Rodriguez Santana is appointed leader of the HCD Economics Spanish team. Idaira joined HCD Economics from the University of York, where she completed her PhD and worked as research fellow in the health policy team. As Senior Health Economist, Idaira leads on a range of health economic studies spanning several disease areas across Europe and North America and has recently added to her list of publications with two recently published papers, one on the role of medical speciality allocation system in Spain (published in Human Resources for Health, ‘Becoming a resident in a high demanded medical specialty: an unequal race? Evidence from the Spanish resident market’) and a paper published in the journal ‘Health Economics, Policy and Law’ (Need, demand, supply in health care: working definitions, and their implications for defining access Health Economics, Policy and Law Cambridge Core), described by Chris Mullin, Chief Economist, UK Department of Health and Social Care as ‘‘A remarkably simple and helpful piece of research’.
Idaira is now actively building the team in the new office, future projects will be in support of the stated objectives of EU healthcare policy while the team will continue to participate and contribute to the research work that HCD Economics undertakes globally and in countries outside of the EU.
For more information on the Spanish team and future research collaboration opportunities please contact idaira.rodriguez@hcdeconomics.com