Evaluation of the quality of oral health care in Primary Health Care in Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014

Abstract

Objective: to evaluate the quality of oral health care in Primary Health Care services in Pernambuco state, Brazil, 2014. Methods: this was an ecological health evaluation study based on the Donabedian model, involving secondary data from the 2nd cycle of the National Program for Improving Access and Quality of Primary Health Care (PMAQ-AB); comparison between the structure, process and outcome variables was done using the Kruskal-Wallis test (p<0.050); variables showing statistical significance (p<0.05) were portrayed through thematic and spatial dependence maps. Results: the standard of quality in the municipalities for the ‘Structure’ dimension gained better scores than the ‘Work process’ dimension; correlations were identified between the indicators for dental urgency, supervised tooth brushing coverage and treatments completed, in quality strata related to the work process of the Oral Health teams. Conclusion: organization of the work process was seen to be a determining factor in the impact on some indicators of service use.