Given the scarcity of studies on workforce turnover rates in the public health care industry in Brazil, the purpose of this study was to assess this rate in the municipal health care network of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Based on the acknowledged inclusion of a turnover rate parameter for the hospital area in the literature and on the frequency distribution noticed in this study, a new parameter for the outpatient network and values for the cutoff points were made formal to classify turnover on the qualiquantitative levels. These values are the base for the analysis of the turnover rate concerning these variables: employment contracts, sanitary districts, health care services, professional categories and primary and secondary health care. The overall turnover rate in the municipal network in the studied period (July 2008 to June 2009) was 8.35% which, even considering the difficulties faced to build the database which derived from distinct sources of information has internal validity in statistical terms.
rotation rate; workforce; municipal health care network; parameter
