Primary care quality from professionals’ perspective: Health of children and adolescents with HIV

Abstract

Objective: evaluate, based on the professionals’ experience, the primary health care quality in home cities of children and adolescents with HIV, treated at a specialized service. Method: cross-sectional study involving 527 professionals in 25 interior cities in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in the first semester of 2014. The Primary Care Assessment Tool was applied. Pearson’s chi-square Test, the Mann Whitney Test and the Poisson Regression were used. Results: the Estratégia Saúde da Família and the primary health care service presented a high score related to the essential attributes: longitudinality (7.17 and 6.74), coordination-integration of care (6.87 and 7.03) and coordination-information systems (8.24 and 8.19); and a low score for the attribute access (3.96 and 3.8). The variables: female gender (0.009), education as general practitioner (<0.001), statutory staff (0.029), coordinator position (0.087) and not having another job (0.027) were also associated with the high score. Conclusion: the coverage of the Estratégia Saúde da Família needs to be expanded and structural and organizational shortages in the access need to be overcome.