According to the Health Commission of the National Assembly of Venezuela, the health system collapsed because of non-functional diagnostic medical equipment that includes 90% of the CT scanners, mammographs, resonators, and laboratories in public hospitals subsequently leading to poor diagnosis and treatment.

A report from the National Assembly shows that 51% of the operating rooms in Venezuela are not operational leading to a waiting list at the public assistance centers. Highest number of deaths occurred in Zulia state with 1,409 cases; Carabobo 928; Aragua 888; Bolivar 802 and Capital District with 735 deaths.

Lack of food supply in the hospitals is another reason for deplorable patient conditions. According to data published, the infant mortality rate (due to lack of milk formula in the pediatric units) increased by 30% during 2016, leading to a total of approximately 11,500 deaths, reflecting the severity of the Venezuelan crisis.

Other reasons that further aggravate the situation in both public and private facilities are the shortage of funds to import medical equipment and maintain it.

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To fill this gap, Global Health Intelligence (GHI) decided to delve into its database (which covers 86% of all hospitals in Latin America and now includes Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay) to analyze which hospitals have the highest equipment counts in 4 specific categories:

• Patient care (number of beds)
• Diagnostic imaging equipment
• Cardiovascular equipment
• Maternity unit equipment

These four categories are critical pillars when evaluating patient care. The number of beds within an institution is often an indicator of the size of the hospital and may be correlated to the level of care. Diagnostic imaging equipment is essential to properly diagnose any number of life-threatening and chronic conditions. Cardiovascular equipment is just as important given the prevalence of heart disease in Latin America. A majority of births take place in hospitals and birthing is one of the main activities of most hospitals, which denotes significant importance to maternity units and infant care. While additional categories could have been included, GHI decided to focus on these 4 areas of care in order make the ranking more manageable.

Why Multiple Categories and Countries?

Rankings are often all-encompassing with no specific focus, such as the “The 50 best hospitals.” Given the complexities of healthcare systems in place and the context in which they operate, GHI opted to acknowledge these characteristics by creating a ranking per leading category. This also enables smaller yet more specialized hospitals to form part of the ranking.

GHI applied the same plurality by setting up the rankings per country in order to reflect local market dynamics accurately. For example, Brazil has over 200 million people and over 7,000 hospitals. It would be an unjust comparison to include Brazilian hospitals alongside those of Peru, for instance, a market that’s 10 times smaller.

Rankings for the Best Equipped Hospitals

The best-equipped hospitals in Argentina
The best-equipped hospitals in Brazil
The best-equipped hospitals in Chile
The best-equipped hospitals in Colombia
The best-equipped hospitals in Dominican Republic
The best-equipped hospitals in Mexico
The best-equipped hospitals in Peru
The best-equipped hospitals in Puerto Rico

Dive Deeper

This GHI ranking will give you an initial sense of which Latin American hospitals are best-equipped. But that’s just a surface view. It takes a deeper dive into the data to understand which market segments have the best potential to drive your revenues.

You can get this deep dive by subscribing to our database , which quickly lets you use data visualization tools to see which hospitals have the biggest needs and what those needs are. Parsing that is what will uncover opportunities for your sales team and allow you to grow your revenues in different markets. Check out this video to understand how the database can help drive new and existing revenue streams. Then contact GHI directly for an even deeper sense of how our database can be the perfect tool for your sales team.

The medical device cleaning market includes detergents and disinfectants used for cleaning and disinfection of medical instruments.

The market is primarily driven by rising incidence of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and the increasing focus on disinfection and sterilization of devices. Disinfection segment accounted for the largest share, owing to the increasing demand for high-level disinfectants & sterilization for heat-sensitive instruments.

Among instruments, surgical instruments segment accounted for the largest share of the market. This is primarily attributed to the increasing number of surgeries and rising awareness of HAIs. Geographically, North America held the largest share of this market.

During the forecast period, APAC region is expected to have high growth due to growing healthcare awareness, increasing number of hospitals and spending. Increasing adoption of single-use medical instruments to avoid HAI risks may restrain the market. Steris Plc is the leading market player.

The company has a comprehensive range of cleaning chemistries and sterility assurance cleansing products and a significant global presence.

Participants are taught about the innovative tactics and best practices from Korean pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers. The officials are also made aware of Korea’s regulatory systems and the government’s policy supports.

Through this program, the countries intend to improve government-to-government relations in the field of healthcare. Since launch of the program in 2013, officials from 13 Latin American countries have attended it including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Panama and Uruguay.

It was noted that all related institutions, companies and hospitals were supportive and actively contributed to operating this program smoothly. South Korea is ahead of South America in the development of medicine. Participants were positive about the KPA program.

The report requested the government to consider the policies for allowing better distribution of professionals in locations deprived of specialists. Two migratory waves were observed in Uruguay; one during the dictatorship and the other during the economic crisis in 2002. However, the situation seems to have reversed with very few doctors migrating to other countries in search of better working conditions.

According to the Medical Union there is zero unemployment in the sector, yet 7% and 10% of Uruguayan doctors work abroad. The majority travel to Spain (51.7%) followed by Chile (24.4%). With the reversal of situation, doctors from other nations are moving to Uruguay for work, especially from Venezuela, Cuba and Pakistan.

Medical implants are routinely used to disorders but development of “biofilms” on the surface of the device after it is implanted in the human body affects the use and patient post-surgery recovery.

The group of bacteria that usually attaches to medical devices is “staphylococci”. They grow on catheters, heart valves and artificial joints and removal of these colonies requires replacement of the medical device. Each incident of biofilm infection costs EUR50,000-90,000 to the healthcare system.

The research team at Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, Dublin have discovered that it is possible to prevent communities of staphylococci from forming by targeting the linkages that hold the bacteria together. Addition of a small blocking molecule prevented SdrC protein attached to the surface of the bacteria from recognizing other bacteria. This prevented the bacteria from forming colonies. This breakthrough can potentially reduce the incidence of medical device-related infection.

Declining costs of hardware and robot-enabling software will ensure market growth and encourage collaborations between healthcare providers and technology developers.

The market is primarily driven by the need to streamline operational workflows, improve quality of healthcare, and provide round-the-clock monitoring for geriatric and disabled patients.

The epicenter seems to have shifted from Japan to United States. Many start-ups are cropping up from Silicon Valley, where the future of robotics is being shaped. There is increasing penetration of cognitive computing, mobile application control, and image or speed recognition. Players such as Cyberdyne, iRobot, Aethon and Swisslog have collaborated with healthcare providers and have successfully integrated robots within hospital environments gaining first-mover advantage.

High costs of ownership and lack of reliability on these systems in critical treatment processes are restraining market growth.

The events include variety of courses, congresses, symposia and seminars. The SMC intends to increase the visibility of public health sector in Cuba to the world and vice-versa.

Some of the topics planned to be discussed at these events are arthroscopic surgery, skin cancer; thermal tourism and quality of life; podiatry, management of the patient with diabetic foot; regenerative medicine cell therapy; clinical toxicology; rehabilitation of hearing disorders; minimally invasive thoracic surgery; aesthetics and health; cranioencephalic trauma; pesticide poisonings; medical disaster management; professional training for primary health care; family medicine; and challenges and challenges of microbiology and parasitology.

The SMC’s director also mentioned that these events would include tours to Cuban healthcare institutions, promotion of medical programs, trade fairs, etc.

The events intend to promote exchange activities, offer of new products and services such as natural and traditional medicine, and all the technological development achieved so far.

SMC developed a business plan for aesthetic and spa centers (hydrotherapy centers), which includes undergraduate and mid-level course in collaboration with an Argentina company, Great Way Export.

The committee plans to promote hydrotherapy center and reduce invasive surgeries which damage human health. Cuba has conducted R&D on natural products, mainly extracted from the human placenta, related to cosmetology.

SMC mentioned three major events planned for the coming months: First International Congress of Podiatry – Cuba 2017, May; The Second International Congress of Aesthetics, Cosmetology and Aesthetic Medicine, July, and First International Congress of Aesthetic Medicine and Plastic Surgery – Cuba 2017, October.

Committee emphasized that these events will promote health tourism in Cuba, with importance on quality of life therapies, new drugs launch and will deepen the regulation of medical practices.

For the survey 23 hospitals in the capital of each state, university hospitals, 371 public and private hospitals, 92 hospitals Type II, Type III, Type IV (large hospitals) were considered. Around 97% of the country’s public health laboratories had shortage of reagents to perform the medical tests. This implies that patients were forced to go private laboratories to perform their medical tests.

Out of pocket pay decreased from 81% in 2016 to 75% in 2017. Around 64% of the pediatric wards in the hospitals had shortage of milk formulas while the same percentage of kitchens of public hospitals were not operational because of no food supplies.

The survey also revealed that 89% of X-ray equipment is either non-operational or intermittent, 71% of hospitals do not have working ultrasound equipment and 94% of CT scans are not functional.

On the contrary, private sector hospitals have 100% of beds and operating rooms in working condition. The private sector treats 55% of Venezuelans. The country has been experiencing medicine shortage for over two years. Physicians and representatives of the public health sector have repeatedly condemned the infrastructure conditions of hospitals, the lack of medicines, as well as the shortage of medical supplies.

IESS found that between 12 to 18% of hospital bills have undue items and between 25 to 40% of laboratory tests were not necessary. The data also highlighted that between 2002 and 2015 there was misappropriation of BRL5 billion in the public health system. While in the private healthcare, irregularities included excessive and unnecessary treatment or poor quality care, inadequate marketing of medicines and medical devices and tax evasion.

The report concluded that absence of transparent mechanisms in the healthcare system lead to such practices. The Brazilian healthcare system lacks transparency in pricing of inputs, health services and in the payment process for services. This makes it impossible to compare and control costs in the different steps that involve patient care. This is happening mainly because the model used for health care payments (fee-for-service) has loopholes.

The report suggested that to combat such practices in the industry, the payment systems need to be modernized. Hospitals should be rewarded for efficiency and best clinical outcome to the patient. They should be punished for waste and unnecessary exams, readmissions or worsening of clinical conditions caused by faulty care.