The technical health care model that portrays the health system as a pyramid with ascending and descending flows of users obtaining access to differentiated levels of technological complexity within articulated reference and counter-reference processes has been conceived as a rationalizing perspective, the merit of which would be to provide greater efficiency in the use of resources, in addition to universal, equitable access. In practical terms, by assuming that facts occur differently than intended under a certain technocratic rationality, the author provides some explanations for this "distortion". He also defends the idea that the health system would be more adequately thought of as a circle, containing multiple "portals of entry" located at several points in the system rather than at a presupposed "base". The author also questions the sense of a "top level", a kind of expression related to a certain "technological hierarchy" with the hospital occupying the apex. At the same time he highlights the health system as an entity to be organized focusing on what is most relevant to each user, offering the most adequate technology in the right place and at the most appropriate time.
Techno-assistance Model; Health Services Accessibility; Health Planning; Public Health