Effectiveness of the Family Health Strategy in units with, and without, the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) Program in a municipality in the west of Paraná state, Brazil

Abstract

Two years after the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) Program, (Programa Mais Médicos — PMM) was put in place in Brazil, there is a need to study its feasibility. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the primary healthcare service offered, from the point of view of the health professionals, comparing units which have, and which do not have, doctors from the Mais Médicos Program. It is a quantitative survey, using for data collection the instrument Primary Care Assessment Tool — Brazil, Version for Health Professionals, applied across the totality of the family health units in a medium sized municipality in the interior of the southern Brazilian State of Paraná, from November 2015 to February 2016. It covered 72 professionals, 47 of them allocated in Family Health Strategy (FHS) units and 25 in FHS units containing the Program. In both groups the scores for core attributes (6.93) and general attributes (7.10) were considered to be appropriate to the precepts of primary healthcare. However, the attributes accessibility (4.17), in both groups, and coordination — information system (6.57), in units with the Mais Médicos Program, did not reach the satisfactory level, indicating a need to alter the organization of the Family Health Strategy, whether the PMM program is implemented or not.

Key words
Primary Healthcare; Primary health doctors; Nurses; Assessment of health services