title: [The concentration of per capita health costs and the control of risk].
abstract: The high concentration of sanitary expenses in a limited proportion of population has been object of study and analysis in the North-American environment. The limitations in the available data bases to contrast this fact in our country have allowed us to establish conclusions up to the present date about this matter. We analyse in this article the concentration of public sanitary expenses in a mutuality of sanitary assistance financed publicly and revises the implications it has on the sanitary policy and investigations in sanitary services. According to the total sanitary expenses, the level of concentration is similar to the one existing in the United States in the 70s, 5% of the population consumes 52% of the total expense. The limits of this study must be placed in the field of analysis since it only includes public expenses in sanitary assistance, and it should be advisable to know the total sanitary expenses per capita, but no available data have been found. The relevance of the implications for the policy and management of the sanitary expenses which can be extracted from this article makes us think deeply about the need of new sanitary statistics which allow us to know better the costs, use and state of individual health.
authors.affiliation: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ibern i Regás
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D017048:Health Care Costs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013030:Spain; D014481:United States