Qualidade do serviço público de saúde: um estudo de caso a partir da percepção dos usuários no município de Lavras

Abstract

The quality of the public health service is represented through technical and social norms that present themselves in multiple dimensions, such as: the equivalence of the law in practice; efficiency in the provision of services; do more with lower price; and satisfaction with user demands and expectations. This work aims to understand the quality of the public health service in the perception of users, in the municipality of Lavras, in Minas Gerais. It was also the purpose of the study to identify if there is satisfaction or dissatisfaction among users regarding the public health service received in the city and to verify if health agents can perceive the expectations and the real perception of the users regarding the quality of the public health service . Knowing the expectations and perceptions of users about the quality in the public health service makes it possible to identify the failures of the service and to trace new actions of planning and execution of the service by the public manager, aiming at the organizational progression and improvements in the delivery of the service . Thus, in order to achieve the proposed objectives, interviews were carried out with the patients and health agents of three PSF (Family Health Program) - PSF Vila Rica, PSF Santa Efigênia and PSF Jardim Floresta. The research utilized the technique of content analysis, being an effective method when it comes to analyzing the discourses collected in the interviews. In order to support this work, a theoretical framework was developed that addressed the following themes: Public services in Brazil, The Brazilian health system, the Unified Health System (SUS) and the public health service, Quality in services and the Evaluation model quality services from Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry. It is concluded that the expectations of the users of the municipality of Lavras are based on: rapid care, humanized care and human, material and financial resources sufficient to meet the demands of the population. These expectations are related to some dimensions of quality, which are: responsiveness, empathy, reliability and assurance. It was evaluated that the satisfaction of the users regarding quality in the public health service of the municipality of Lavras-MG is low, and it is possible to perceive this through the limitations and the difficulties that they face to receive the public health service of Lavras. In addition, it is clear the existence of limitations and organizational difficulties in the public sector that hinders the delivery of a quality public health service. It is hoped that the research may be the starting point for further studies both in the public health sector of Lavras-MG and in the health sector of other municipalities, in order to investigate the quality of Brazilian public services.