Potential barriers in healthcare access of the elderly population influenced by the economic crisis and the troika agreement: a qualitative case study in Lisbon, Portugal

BACKGROUND: The recent economic and financial crisis in Portugal urged the Portuguese Government in April 2011 to request financial assistance from the troika austerity bail out program to get aid for its government debt. The troika agreement included health reforms and austerity measures of the National Health Service (NHS) in Portugal to save non-essential health care costs. This research aimed to identify potential barriers among the elderly population (aged 65 and above) to healthcare access influenced by the economic crisis and the troika agreement focussing on the Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality (MoU) in Lisbon metropolitan area, Portugal. METHODS: The qualitative study is including 13 semi-structured interviews of healthcare experts, municipality authority, health care providers, negotiator of the troika agreement, hospital managers, health economists and elderly. A content analysis was performed to evaluate the interviews applying Nvivo2011 software. The barriers identified were clustered towards the five areas of the ‘Conceptual framework on health care access’ by Levesque et al. (Int J Equity Health 12:18, 2013). RESULTS: Healthcare access for the elderly was found inadequate in four areas of the framework: availability; appropriateness; approachability; and affordability. The fifth area on acceptability was not identified since the study neither followed a gender nor ethnic specific purpose. The main identified barriers were: current financial situation and pension cuts; insufficient provision and increased user fees in primary care; inadequate design and availability of hospital care service; lack of long-term care facilities; increased out-of-pocket-payment on pharmaceuticals; limitations in exemption allowances; cuts in non-emergent health transportation; increased waiting time for elective surgery; and poor unadapted housing conditions for elderly. CONCLUSIONS: The health reforms and health budget cuts in the MoU implemented as part of the troika agreement have been associated with increasing health inequalities in access to healthcare services for the elderly population. The majority of responses disclosed an increasing deficiency across the entire National Health Service (NHS) to collaborate, integrate and communicate between the different healthcare sectors for providing adequate care to the elderly. An urgent necessity of restructuring the health care system to adapt towards the elderly population was implied.