Evaluation of primary health care by users during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study

by Suely Deysny de Matos Celino, Nailton Jos é Brandão de Albuquerque Filho, Monalisa da Nóbrega Cesarino Gomes, Gabriela Maria Cavalcanti Costa, Ana Elza Oliveira de Mendonça ObjectiveTo evaluate the primary health care (PHC) attributes and associated factors during the COVID-19 pandemic using the perspective of users. MethodsThis cross-sectional, quantitative study included 422 PHC users from 96 Family Health Teams in a city in Brazil. The assessment used the Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCATool) and a structured questionnaire on the sociodemographic and epidemiological characteristics of users and basic health units (BHU). The Person ’s chi-square test was used to analyze the association between high overall scores in PCATool and characteristics of users and BHU. Crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) with a 95% confidence interval were also calculated. Poisson regression and Rao Scott’s Chi-square test were used to estim ate crude PR. ResultsMost users were aged 30 to 39 years (26.3%), women (75.4%), registered at the BHU for over ten years (59.5%), and had incomplete secondary education (30.6%). The mean of PHC essential attributes and overall scores were low (6.10 ± 0.81 and 5.78 ± 0.77, respectively). "First-contact care–use" received the highest score (9.22 ± 1.62), while "first-contact care–accessibility" received the lowest (2.82 ± 0.90). High overall scores were associated with an average employment time of professionals (doctors and nurses) at ...
Source: PLoS One - Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Source Type: research