Describing the Primary Care Actions of Oral Health Teams in Brazil

Abstract

Objective: To describe the primary care actions performed by oral health teams (OHTs) that participated in a large national survey led by the Ministry of Health in 2012. Methods: A total of 12,403 dentists from OHTs completed a set of survey questions (response rate = 85.01%) on the organization of care, basic dental procedures and oral health surveillance actions of OHTs. Descriptive and hierarchical cluster analyses were developed. Results: The majority of OHTs (85.2%) reported that they performed “patient welcoming”. The delivery of services was based on a patient’s identified disease risk (83.1%), and continuity of care was ensured by 85.9% of OHTs. Individual preventive, restorative and surgical procedures were performed by the majority of the teams; however, screening for oral cancer and construction of dental prostheses/dentures occurred less frequently. Cluster 1 was composed of OHTs with the lowest proportion of oral healthcare actions related to oral cancer and dental prostheses/dentures, and the Southeastern and Southern regions had higher proportions of OHTs from cluster 2. Conclusions: OHTs adhere to some of the principles of primary care organizations; however, the teams perform fewer actions related to oral cancer treatment and rehabilitation with complete dentures. The geographical distribution of the clusters was unequal in Brazil.

Regional differences in infection control conditions in a sample of primary health care services in Brazil

“…Both patients and dental staff appear to be routinely at risk of cross-infection in dental health-care settings 17 . Despite being not very big, the regional differences in the distribution of frequencies of clusters demonstrated the same trends identified in another previous evaluation of PHC in Brazil 20 . The planning of healthcare facilities should also consider these inequalities so that more resources are applied in the regions with worse conditions.…”

“…For example, if one clinic's score was 8, it meant that this service had met eight infection control criteria. Although the SUS may have geographical differences in the quality of its services 20,21 , for infection control, no previous results have shown any differences. Therefore, we used the multivariate agglomerative hierarchy technique and the between-groups linkage (average linkage) with squared Euclidian distances for the cluster analysis 22 .…”

Availability of Dental Prosthesis Procedures in Brazilian Primary Health Care

“…Each FHS team underwent a certification process based on the results of an external evaluation and analysis of health indicators. The PMAQ-AB was based on the Donabedian model that establishes a fundamental conceptual framework for the understanding of health quality assessment, based on the concepts of structure, process, and outcome [9, 12]. …”

“…According to the results of evaluation of the health teams, they can receive a financial incentive for the continuity of systematic progress. Previous studies based on data from the PMAQ-AB have already evaluated the performance of dental procedures [8, 9] and oral health preventive procedures [10], as well as the interrelation between PHC and specialized care [11]. However, despite financial incentives provided by the Brazilian MS to expand and qualify PHC, no detailed evaluation of the performance of prosthetic procedures has been carried out as yet.…”

Trends in use of dental services by Brazilian pre‐school children considering Age‐Period‐Cohort Effect

“…Moreover, Dental Specialty Centers were created for complex dental procedures. The number of OHT reached almost 30 000 in 2013, which is three times higher than the beginning of the programme and almost two times higher than the first year of data collection . Although there is a steadfast increase in government support for the public oral health policies, this stability could be due to the fact that there is not a specific policy for young children.…”