Infrastructure and work process in primary health care: PMAQ in Ceará

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the quality of the infrastructure and work process of the Family Health Strategy in the municipalities of Ceará between 2012 and 2014. METHODS: Cross-sectional study, using secondary data from the external evaluation of the 1st (2012) and 2nd (2014) cycle of the National Program for Improvement of Access and Quality of Primary Care in Ceará. A total of 20 composite indicators were used to verify the quality of infrastructure and work process. RESULTS: Data from 183 (99.4%) of the 184 municipalities of Ceará were collected in both cycles. A total of 1,441 teams were evaluated for the infrastructure and 800 for the work process. Among the 20 composite indicators evaluated, 18 presented an improvement, but in a non-homogeneous way, ranging between 0.0 and 413.5%. We observed that the lower the initial value of the indicator, the greater the variation in quality between 2012 and 2014. The indicators of infrastructure and work process were influenced by the regional health system and population size of the municipality, being more evident the influence on the variables of the work process. CONCLUSIONS: We identified that quality improvements related to infrastructure and work process occurred in the period of implementation of the program in the state of Ceará in an equitable manner, being influenced by population size and regional health system, showing the influence of the context in the implementation of public policies of this nature.