Nephrology around Europe: organization models and management strategies: Spain

The main aim of this report is to present a picture of the current organization of nephrology in Spain. The Spanish health system offers almost universal coverage, a wide variety of services and a high-quality network of hospitals and primary care centers. Spain has a specialized health care training system that is highly developed, highly regulated, with the capacity to provide high-quality training in 54 different specialties. Nephrology is basically a hospital-based specialty. There are no private dialysis patients in Spain. Hemodialysis centers are 40% public, 15% private and 45% run by companies. The National Health System covers 95% of the population, and there is no cost to patients for treatment of renal disease (dialysis and transplant). We observed a clear decrease of nephrology in residents' election rankings, with position 29 out of 47 specialties in 2007. Some of the reasons for this are the complexity of the subject, no clear information at the university, reduction of professional posts and a very good public service with minimal private practice. In Spain, a model of organization for transplantation was adopted based on a decentralized transplant coordinating network. For cadaveric donors, it compares favorably with rates in other Western countries. Living donor transplantation is very low in Spain--just 10% of total renal transplantation activity. New programs due to financial constraints need to include reduced dialysis costs, greater cost-effectiveness of prescriptions, better handling of ethical issues related to the need for using a clinical score of chronic kidney disease patients to make decisions about conservative or renal replacement therapy and an action plan for improvement of organ donation and transplantation. Recovery of skills (acute kidney injury, biopsies, vascular access, etc.), research and advances in autonomous activities (imaging, surgical and medical vascular training, etc.) are some of the future educational paths needed in nephrology. Adequate decisions in the context of economic restrictions need to be discussed for the sustainability of nephrological care.