Analysis of the Health Expenditure in Brazilian Municipalities

This study analyzes the spending of Brazilian municipalities on health using an approach based on computational intelligence. The study was characterized by a quantitative and documentary database, and 117 municipalities with an average population between 2004 and 2019 of more than 100,000 inhabitants were analyzed. The data was obtained from the Brazilian Finance database (Finbra) (National Treasury Secretariat) and processed and adjusted for inflation. The main technique used was cluster analysis via R software, version 3.3.3. When comparing general health expenditures with hospital care and expenditure by government function, it was evident that there is a correlation between these variables, while none was found between primary care and general expenditures and expenses by government function. Spending by government function and hospital care allows us to infer that there is a moderate influence of these on the former, but that there is none on primary care, despite the outliers. However, the cluster analysis provides different results, which might indicate disparities in expenditure when considering economic particularities of each municipality. It is concluded that computational intelligencein health management can be combined with control and transparency in the distribution ofresources in Brazilian municipalities. It is noteworthy that the management of health resources in Brazil is always analyzed in isolation for each municipality, while in the present work the grouping technique was used in order to support public managers in the decision-making process aimed at better development of public policies in the health area.