Quality assessment of ESF in Curitiba: cross sectional study based on the AMQ

Abstract

Currently, the quality of care is one of the main challenges to the National Health System (NHS) and it must be understood in the light of the principles of integrality, universality, equity and social participation. In order to improve the quality of care, the Brazilian Ministry of Health has developed the proposal “Quality Improvement Evaluation (QIE) of the Family Health Strategy (FHS),” a specific tool that aims at managerial, technical and scientific improvement. The Municipal Health Secretary of Curitiba has joined it voluntarily and proactively, placing the evaluation as a permanent instrument for decision-making and determining the quality as an attribute to be reached by the NHS-Curitiba. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the self-reported quality of the FHS in Curitiba through QIE, identifying the stage of quality achieved by the actors of the Family Health in the city. To this end, a cross-sectional descriptive study was used. In the third evaluation stage, Curitiba had 49 respondent Family Health Units (instrument 3), 153 respondent health teams (instruments 4 and 5), a municipal manager (instrument 1), and a Municipal Coordination of Family Health Strategy (instrument 2). The following results for quality levels were found: elementary quality (93.98%), quality under development (90.79%), consolidated quality (89.71%), good quality (88.25%) and advanced quality (78.23%). From the perspective of continuous quality improvement, it was possible to observe a procedural increase, with highest percentage in its E stage elements, which address the basic conditions of structure and infrastructure (quality E). The large amount of positive evaluations, greater than 65% in all assessments, demonstrates the high quality standard found in the city at all QIE stages. The evolution of the work performed cannot be verified due to the dichotomous QIE response and it should thus be revised.