Analysis of manifestations to the General Ombudsman of the Unified Health System (SUS), from 2014 to 2018: evidence for decision-making

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the manifestations of citizens to the Unified Health System (SUS) General Ombudsman, in the 2014-2018 period, discussing and understanding them as evidence to guide the decision-making of SUS managers. To this end, the database of the Ouvi-dorSUS computerized system was extracted from 16 variables related to the content of the mani-festations, their categorization, and the citizen’s profile. We identified 216,832 registered manifestations and 114,618 profiles of citizens who con-tacted the SUS General Ombudsman during this period, mainly through the hotline Disque Saúde 136. The groups that most accessed the Ombudsman and responded to the citizen profile were women, white, heterosexual, aged between 31 and 40, having complete or incomplete higher educa-tion, and private sector workers with an income of 1-2 minimum wages. The most frequent issues of demands, mainly related to requests, complaints and denunciations, were system management, health care, and pharmaceutical care. The records show the importance of consolidating the Om-budsman’s strategic variables for qualifying the system management.