Analysis of drop-in visits of children and adolescents for planning the actions of the Family Health Program

Abstract

Today, establishing a drop-in policy is one of the most important challenges of primary care. Find the right dimension for delivering care on this basis is one of the starting points for organizing the work of the Family Health Teams (FHT). The purpose of this study was analyzing the demand of drop-in visits of children and adolescents of one of the Family Health Teams of the São Marcos Health Center (SMHC) for planning the actions of the team. The family health team of the SMHC, situated in the Northeast of the city of Belo Horizonte, accepts drop-in visits during all day. The medical records over the period October 2005-September 2006 corresponding to the drop-in visits during a certain period of the day, which was reserved for this activity, were analyzed. The sample consisted of 30% of the about 5.000 visits, selected at random. The data were analyzed using Epi-Info. From the 1602 analyzed visits, 627 (39,2%) were of patients with less than 20 years of age. About 24% were children with less than 2 years and 26% were adolescents. The patients with acute complaints corresponded to 80,4% of all pediatric visits. A little more than half of the children were of feminine sex. Approximately 100 children (16,9%) dropped in for making appointments or for showing the results of exams. From these, 12% were well-child care cases and 5% carriers of chronic respiratory diseases like asthma. Four adolescents came for pre-natal care. The low percentage of children with less than two years of age in the dropin visits suggests that the monthly well-child care had worked efficiently. The same refers to the children inscribed in the asthma treatment program .Criança que Chia.. However, most of the children up to 10 years with acute complaints need appointments so that they can be cared for as quickly as possible. On the basis of these results the agendas will be reorganized and the attributions of the team members will be reviewed proposing alternatives for the users of this age group.