Hospitalizations for sensitive conditions primary care (ICSAP): discussing limits on the use of this indicator in the evaluation of Primary Health Care
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3395/reciis.v7i2.467Keywords:
Primary health care, Hospitalization, Health information systems, Health assessment, Health indicatorsAbstract
This paper questions using the indicator hospitalization for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ASCS) in primary health care (PHC) evaluations based on information from secondary data in the Brazilian Unified Health System Databank (Banco de dados do Sistema Único de Saúde - DATASUS). This study is quantitative, descriptive and exploratory, and we used information from 13 municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul. Although the ASCS rates are declining in each municipality, the data indicate large disparities. By analyzing the medical facilities, we found that the municipalities with decreased ASCS rates have at least one hospital, and municipalities with the greatest ASCS rate decrease only have PHC. Further, the ASCS rate decline was not consistent with increased population coverage by family health care teams (Equipes de Saúde da Família - ESF). This result suggests that the hospitalization demand in such municipalities is more related to availability of a hospital facility and health system inadequacies, not that health needs are unmet by PHC. Thus, it is limiting to only use this indicator to evaluate PHC without considering additional issues related both to PHC and Municipal service network.Downloads
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