Provision and use of teleconsultations for Primary Health Care in the Telehealth Brazil Networks Program

• Autor(a) principal: Schmitz, Carlos André Aita
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Harzheim, Erno
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.rbmfc.org.br/rbmfc/article/view/1453
• topic: Primary Health Care. Telemedicine. Program Evaluation. Medical Informatics.; Atención Primaria de Salud. Telemedicina. Evaluación de Programas y Proyectos de Salud. Informática Médica.; Atenção primária em saúde. Telemedicina. Avaliação de Programas e Projetos de Saúde. Informática Médica.; Telessaúde para Atenção Primária à Saúde

Objective: To evaluate the adjustment of teleconsultations provided by a large telehealth program in Brazil (Telehealth Brazil Networks) based on the analysis of National Telehealth Platform structure and process data. Method: This descriptive study involves statistical analysis of a historical series (24 months) of teleconsultations provided by 18 telehealth groups across the country between October 2013 and September 2015. Results: During the study period, 29,575 teleconsultations were provided by 18 telehealth groups to 43,421 users from 9,801 health units. The average number of teleconsultations per consultant per month ranged from 0.92 to 2.06, and the average number of requests per user per month ranged from 0.22 to 1.00. The percentage of health units with at least one request/month remained close to 0.1% throughout the study period, with no request at all from 87.3% of the users during this time. The requests for teleconsultations covered all the chapters of the International Ranking of Primary Care and of the International Ranking of Diseases. User satisfaction reached 95.6%, and 88.4% of the requests were fully resolved. Conclusions: Despite the adequate provision of telehealth support in relation to the goals of the Brazil Telehealth Networks program, demand is still low. As a consequence, the system remains largely idle, despite its capacity to provide answers for a broad range of subjects. This suggests the need to scale up reach, with horizontal integration and strengthening of telehealth regulation and audit steps, as well as to concentrate resources and reduce the number of telehealth groups. In addition, investments are needed to develop new types of synergistic and systemic telehealth actions, including support to the outpatient regulation system and population guidance.