The use of population pyramids to represent the Colombian health care system

El uso de pirámides poblacionales como representación gráfica del sistema de salud colombiano

Objective: to represent the statistics of the use of health services in Colombia, by gender and age group, by means of population pyramids. Materials and methods: data were extracted from all the people attended, the number of services provided and the number of hospitalizations in Colombia in 2015, based on the Individual Health Service Delivery Registries (RIPS), the Ministry of Health official database. For the number of attentions, a population adjustment was made for each age group, based on the population of each group estimated by the population projections of DANE (the national statistics agency). Results: during that year, about 50% of the Colombian population (23,960,000 people) was attended, the largest group were children under 5 years of age. From 10 years of age onwards, attentions are more numerous for women. On average, a total of 11.8 attendances per person were provided, and 1,890,000 hospital discharges were recorded. Health care, as well as hospitalizations, are concentrated in people over 80, under 5 and women of childbearing age. Conclusions: the population pyramids are a useful graphical strategy to represent the populations served by a health system.