Avaliação da Atenção Primária à Saúde utilizando o indicador de Internações por Condições Sensíveis à Atenção Primária (ICSAP) na perspectiva dos usuários e seus itinerários terapêuticos

Abstract

The Primary Health Care (PHC) is one of most embracing ways of the health service, contemplating the assistance to population by prevention actions and promotion of health as well as care to the most prevalent chronic diseases in the population; being the Family Health Strategy (FHS) the closest form from user’s reality. Given the relevance of PHC in the public health scenario nowadays, there are many studies that aim to evaluated it, being approached in this study the evaluation of PHC through the indicator of Hospitalization Primary Care Sensitivity (HPCS). The HPCS can be defined as the Hospitalizations for preventive diseases through effective and resolutive PHC, and the high numbers of HPCS brings up meanings related to relevant issues to PHC and how users experience it. The users experience by PHC services, approaching HPCS becomes possible through the analysis of the paths covered by the users searching for health care: the Therapeutic Itineraries (TI). In light of this, it was decided to do a qualitative research paper work aiming the evaluation of the PHC basing at the HPCS indicator under user’s perspective grounded on the therapeutic itineraries they experienced; knowing the TI covered by users and discuss the related factors to hospitalizations. The case scenario was the city of Cataguases, Minas Gerais, embracing thirty participants who had been hospitalized for HPCS. From the stories heard during the interviews and analysed through the Bardin Content Analysis was allow to extract the follow analysis categories: participants characterizations, the PHC under user’s perspective; aspects related to the admissions process and PHC analysis based on the TI covered by users. The results indicate that the majority of participants were hospitalized for cerebrovascular diseases (23,3%). Users reported some access difficulties, as well as reference services to specialized consultations and exams fee. Regarding the aspects related to the admissions process, it was observed that the users maintained unhealthy lifestyle habits like smoking, and did not have knowledge and adherence to the prevention and health promotion activities developed by the city's FHS. By analysing TI closely, it was possible to understand that users mostly use the First-Aid Post as the main gateway, being this a significant factor to rethinking the policies aimed the user’s understanding about the differentiation of health care, as well as improvements made in PHC.