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Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain

The Health system in Spain is considered one of the most valued public services by the population. In fact, during the first decade of the 21st century, Spain became a health tourism destination for people from central and northern European countries. In addition to the health infrastructure, the qu...

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Autores principales: Miramontes Carballada, Ángel, Lois-González, Rubén C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8750819/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35010290
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010034
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author Miramontes Carballada, Ángel
Lois-González, Rubén C.
author_facet Miramontes Carballada, Ángel
Lois-González, Rubén C.
author_sort Miramontes Carballada, Ángel
collection PubMed
description The Health system in Spain is considered one of the most valued public services by the population. In fact, during the first decade of the 21st century, Spain became a health tourism destination for people from central and northern European countries. In addition to the health infrastructure, the quality of medical and nursing care stands out. Something similar also happens with the Spanish pharmaceutical system. However, there are some characteristics that should be addressed from a Geography perspective. The pharmacies’ legal system does not consider them to be of public interest. One is when some of the main activities are the sale and distribution of medicines that are partially paid for by the Administration, that is, Social Security. In the same activity, the public function is combined with the private interests of the pharmacy owners to provide a balanced territorial service. One of the conclusions demonstrates how the borders that are sometimes created by the Administration are not always the most efficient in relation to the characteristics of the territory, nor do they provide the best service to the population and, therefore, create territorial imbalances within a country. To reach our conclusions, we carried out an exhaustive study of the pharmacy legislation in the EU and in Spain, as well as Geography of Health and theories of territorial location. We combined this information with statistics on the territorial characteristics of Spain. This allowed us to confirm the peculiarities that exist within the governance of the distribution of pharmacy offices in Spain.
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spelling pubmed-87508192022-01-12 Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain Miramontes Carballada, Ángel Lois-González, Rubén C. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The Health system in Spain is considered one of the most valued public services by the population. In fact, during the first decade of the 21st century, Spain became a health tourism destination for people from central and northern European countries. In addition to the health infrastructure, the quality of medical and nursing care stands out. Something similar also happens with the Spanish pharmaceutical system. However, there are some characteristics that should be addressed from a Geography perspective. The pharmacies’ legal system does not consider them to be of public interest. One is when some of the main activities are the sale and distribution of medicines that are partially paid for by the Administration, that is, Social Security. In the same activity, the public function is combined with the private interests of the pharmacy owners to provide a balanced territorial service. One of the conclusions demonstrates how the borders that are sometimes created by the Administration are not always the most efficient in relation to the characteristics of the territory, nor do they provide the best service to the population and, therefore, create territorial imbalances within a country. To reach our conclusions, we carried out an exhaustive study of the pharmacy legislation in the EU and in Spain, as well as Geography of Health and theories of territorial location. We combined this information with statistics on the territorial characteristics of Spain. This allowed us to confirm the peculiarities that exist within the governance of the distribution of pharmacy offices in Spain. MDPI 2021-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8750819/ /pubmed/35010290 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010034 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Miramontes Carballada, Ángel
Lois-González, Rubén C.
Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain
title Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain
title_full Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain
title_fullStr Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain
title_full_unstemmed Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain
title_short Liberalization and Governance in the Geographical Distribution of Pharmacies in Spain
title_sort liberalization and governance in the geographical distribution of pharmacies in spain
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8750819/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35010290
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010034
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