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 2^nd 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.

Keywords:
Primary Health Care; Health Evaluation; Quality of Health Care; Indicators of Health Services; Oral Health