DETERMINANTS OF IMRS-SAÚDE INDEX

ANALYSIS OF THE CITIES FROM MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL

Abstract

Providing health care to the population and performing an efficient management of its resources is a challenge for managers, and it is important that public entities invest public resources efficiently, aiming to promote social well being. This paper analyzes the relationship of health financing indicators of the cities from Minas Gerais, Brazil, and the performance of their management. We chose Minas Gerais because the state is a fertile field for studies on public policies, as it has the largest number of cities, which have high heterogeneity among themselves, especially in terms of socioeconomic development. The performance of health management was measured by the IMRS-Saúde index of all 853 Minas Gerais cities, with biannual data for the years 2006 to 2018, totaling 5,971 observations. We analyzed the data by Exploratory Data Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression with panel data. The results suggest that the financing of health activities is significant in explaining variations in health management performance (IMRS-Saúde) and that income and education indicators can also predict health management performance. The results we obtained can serve as subsidies for managers to optimize the management of public expenditure and to monitor and assess the quality of actions in health services.