More Doctors Program: health work process and socioeconomic indicators

Abstract

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE To analyze the working process of the professionals of the More Doctors Program and its relationship with socioeconomic indicators. It is a quantitative study, in which secondary data from supervision reports of PMM were used. The dependent variable was the quality of work processes in Primary Care facilities, and the independent ones were the type of municipality, education, Gini index, Primary Health Care investments, and health facilities coverage. Data were analyzed with multiple modeling based on Poisson regression with robust variance. RESULTS 16,000 doctors within 3816 municipalities were analyzed. Variables related to the working process the remained significant in the final model were the investments in Primary Health Care and the health facilities coverage. The results expressed the equity principle, as those municipalities with more vulnerable conditions and with higher coverage are prone to perform more activities in their working process. CONCLUSIONS The implementation of the More Doctors Program and hence the provision of doctors in deprived regions promoted the consolidation of three main aspects, namely the health working process, primary health care and equity, making it possible to carry out a health working process focused on PHC. This implies performing a greater number of activities that are inherent to PHC, which were not carried out due to the absence of doctors. The More Doctors Program fulfills its role in the combat of inequalities, particularly regarding more vulnerable municipalities.