Integración de redes de servicios de salud en Honduras: valoración comparativa del planteamiento teórico y de la aplicación práctica en cinco redes del país

OBJECTIVE: There have been few evaluations of integrated health service delivery networks (IHSDN) in the Region of the Americas. Honduras has made progress in the implementation of tools and strategies based on the essential attributes of IHSDNs. The objective of this study is to assess and compare the development of IHSDNs in theoretical and practical terms, by type of management, in five networks in Honduras. METHODS: The study was conducted in two stages: 1) a theoretical assessment based on a review and summary of six official documents on IHSDNs published between 2012 and 2017, and 2) a practical assessment in conjunction with the coordination teams of five networks, two of them with decentralized management and three of them with mixed management, using the IHSDN Assessment Tool of the Pan American Health Organization. RESULTS: The overall theoretical assessment yielded a development score of (55 points), compared with the 42.8 of the practical assessment of the five networks. In the analysis by area, the model of care had better results in both assessments, with higher scores in the theoretical assessment (62.5). The area with the lowest score (41.7) was governance and strategy. The differences between the theoretical and practical assessment in the area and attribute analyses were statistically significant (p = 0.007 and p < 0.001, respectively). The networks with decentralized management had higher scores than those with mixed management (p = 0.017). CONCLUSIONS: There is a gap between the theoretical and practical assessment that suggests that application of the tools and strategies defined in the documents is incomplete. The provisional component remains the one that elicits the most interest and is considered the most important. Greater difficulties with integration were observed in the networks with mixed management, probably because of their dual governance. Continued evaluation of IHSDNs is necessary.