ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to characterize the arrangements and actions of coordination of care developed by the ‘Street Clinic’ (Consultório na Rua/CnaR). A qualitative study was carried out based on participant observation and interviews with CnaR professionals and reference services in a large city. The care coordination was analyzed in the horizontal and vertical dimensions. The results show that the horizontal coordination is strengthened by the reception, presence, and insistence of the team in being on the streets, in meeting formally and informally, by the schedule flexibility, and by the various actions to ensure the users’ permanence in other spaces inside and outside the healthcare sector. The development of intersectoral actions faces different conceptions of the policies and the right to health among governmental agencies. Coordination between levels is even more fragile due to the fragmentation of services, lack of professional communication, document requirements, non-accountability of other services, and precarious labor relations that prevent the construction of long-lasting relationships. CnaR’s care coordination initiatives reaffirm its strategic role in the weaving of networks, negotiations, tensions and discomforts that it can provoke by bringing, even partially, excluded people back to the field of citizenship and the right to health.
KEYWORDS
Primary Health Care; Homeless persons; Delivery of health care, integrated