Assessment of the reception capacity of spontaneous demand in primary care services

Abstract

This study’s aim was to evaluate the receptivity of primary health care services, based on the records classifiedas non-urgent on the Manchester scale. Exploratory study with random sample consisted of 384 blue and greenrecords of children and adolescents attended by public emergency services. The address entered on therecords allowed the identification of the primary care service of the patients’ region of residency. 20.6% wereclassified as blue and 79.4% as green. The median was equal to eight calls per Unit of Primary Care. Twentyunits (55.5%) had a score equal to or lower than the median, and were considered moderate in terms ofreceptivity and 16 (44.5%) were above the cut line and were considered to have low receptivity. The studyfound that the receptivity of children and adolescents was considered mostly moderate, with betterperformance of the units working in the Family Health Strategy.

Descriptors: Primary health care; Health services accessibility; Humanization of assistance.