Performance Evaluation of the Brazilian Health System in 215 Discourses: Comparative Simplifications and Control Weaknesses

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the form and content of the collective opinion of stakeholders on the Performance Index of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS). A quanti-qualitative methodology was used, whose capturing of speeches was made on electronic sites, portals and blogs that dealt with the subject. The Discourse of Collective Subject method was used for processing 215 speeches into fourteen central ideas. The most frequent was "undue comparisons" 23.04% (50); the "good evaluation" of the system, 13.36% (29); and "criticism to the method/index" 11.52% (25). We perceive that in the collective opinion on the performance there was a majority pole that simplifies extremely complex processes, making the evaluation shallow. Another, minority, seeks to retrain the debate on performance evaluation by recovering the production of knowledge on the completeness of work processes. Thus, we can affirm that the control of civil society regarding the evaluation of the performance of the health system seems fragile.