Association between costs per family health team and size of basic health unit in a capital of southern brazil

Abstract

The scope of this article is to verify the existence of the association between the number of family health teams in primary care units and the individual costs per team. A total of 46 basic health units were included in the sample to verify association through multiple linear regression between the costs per team (dependent variable) and the number of teams per unit, controlled by the number of health care procedures (independent variables). The data used were derived from a study of assessment of costing by absorption. There was an important inverse association between the size of the unit and the costs per team, controlled by the number of health care procedures (adjusted R² =0.69; p<0.001 for CI=95%), although costs per team in similar sized units varied considerably. The results encountered tend to suggest the benefits of the allocation of a larger number of family health teams in the same unit, thereby reducing the costs per team.