ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the efficiency of control actions of Hypertension in Primary Health Care in the municipalities in Northern Brazil. Methods: Evaluative, descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative study using Data Envelopment Analysis. The inputs were: financial resources, team work hours and use of consulting rooms; and the outputs: hypertension control actions (registered hypertensive patients, individual appointment and home visits to hypertensive patients). Data collection was performed through secondary databases, with data for the year 2013. Results: 142 municipalities were stratified into two population sizes were used for the study: up to 10,000 inhabitants (size 1) and 10,001 to 20,000 inhabitants (size 2). The results indicated a low percentage of efficient municipalities (22.5% in size 1 and 34.7% in size 2), with the lowest average efficiency (0.7634) in cities of size 1. The biggest deficits found were in the individual appointment with hypertensive patients in both sizes (48.6% and 46.6% respectively). Conclusions: These municipalities had efficiency scores below their installed capacities and could increase their health actions by more than 40% on average. The results indicate that managers could better plan hypertension actions, optimizing the available resources to increase the offer of services provided to hypertensive patients.
Keywords:
Primary Health Care; Hypertension; Efficiency; Health services evaluation.