Objective: to verify the quality of child health care in the Family Health Strategy (FHS) in a state capital of Northeastern Brazil. Methods: a descriptive study using a quantitative approach was carried out in 2010 with 66 primary care (PC) teams represented by their doctors and nurses. The survey used part of the Evaluation for Quality Improvement of the Family Health Strategy² (AMQ), a self-rating instrument of the Brazilian Ministry of Health which evaluates the FHS actions and services and classifies them by the following quality-based standards of care: Elementary, undergoing development, Consolidated, Good or Advanced. Results: 84.1% of the FHS-teams rated themselves as providing "Elementary" actions and services, and 47.7% of them considered that they provided "Advanced" ones. The health teams with less than four years of implementation rated themselves better. Conclusion: these findings suggest that most of the FHC-teams are providing care with an elementary standard of quality, and indicate that better quality child care is apparently delivered with by teams with less time of implementation.Key words: health care quality. access. evaluation of health systems. family health. child health. (public health).
Objective To assess the quality of the Primary Health Care services provided to children and the feasibility of using the Brazilian version of Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT-Brazil) as a routine quality assessment tool. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out in Joanópolis, a small rural town in the State of São Paulo (SP), Brazil. Seven health professionals and 502 caretakers of children using the public health center were interviewed using the PCAT-Brazil, collecting data on the core and related attributes of Primary Health Care provided to children. The score of each attribute was calculated. Results Caretakers rated as good the following attributes; “degree of affiliation”, “first contact care − use of services”, “coordinated care”, and “comprehensive care − available services”. The attributes of “first contact accessibility”, “long term person care”, “comprehensive care − offered services” and “family- and community-oriented care” were scored as poor. The health professionals only rated the attribute of “first contact accessibility” as satisfactory, and considered that all other Primary Health Care attributes needed improvement. To conduct this study, at least 1,241 working hours were invested, and the estimated budget was R$12.900,00 (or U$3,953.00). Conclusion The use of the PCAT-Brazil as a routine assessment and planning tool seemed to be not feasible in the given setting due to high costs, lack of trained personnel and the huge workload. To overcome the encountered obstacles, advices are given based on field experience.
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