Users' satisfaction with Porto Alegre's Primary Care Network

Abstract

Users' satisfaction is an important end-point to evaluate health services. This study has to do with an assessment of the level of user's satisfaction with relation to the last visit held in the primary health care network of Porto Alegre — RS, whose objective is to compare satisfaction of the users that assess the quality of the care process received as being of high APS score with that of the users who evaluate it as low APS score. A cross-sectional study based on the population, using the Primary Care Assessment Tool - PCATool, which enables the classification of the health services at the level of guidance to APS by means of the general score of primary care, defining it as high or low, in accordance with the users' experience. The satisfaction of the user was measured by a questionnaire consisting of twelve questions relative to the last visit, being measured by a 5-item Likert scale: "very good", "good", "regular", "bad" and "very bad". For the analysis, the results were grouped into two classifications, i.e. "satisfied", when referred as "veg good" or "good", and "dissatisfied" when referred to any of the other items. A significant difference was noticed in the 12 variables reflecting satisfaction in several aspects of the visit, showing higher satisfaction in users that classified the service as being of high score. The .general evaluation of the service presented 95.6% and 73.5% of "satisfied" in the services with high and low APS score, respectively (p<0.001). Users of services with high level of guidance to primary care obtain higher satisfaction in their visits. This higher satisfaction can benefit the decision-making process of the patient in face of the medical recommendations made.