Abstract

GIMENEZ-CABALLERO, Edgar; AMARILLA, María Gloria; GONZALEZ-DE MESTRAL, César  and  ARAUJO-QUEVEDO, José Modesto. Health services availability and readiness assesment at the first level of care in five health regions of Paraguay during 2022. Mem. Inst. Investig. Cienc. Salud [online]. 2022, vol.20, n.3, pp.13-26. ISSN 1812-9528.  https://doi.org/10.18004/mem.iics/1812-9528/2022.020.03.13.

Paraguay defined as a priority to achieve universal access and coverage based on Primary Health Care, incorporating the Family Health Units (FHU) in the communities. The objective of the study was to provide metrics to manage improvements in the national healthcare network by analyzing the degree of preparation of the first level of care to provide comprehensive health services. The design was non-experimental, quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive with an analytical component. It included 216 establishments from the Sanitary Regions of Concepción, Amambay, Caaguazú, Canindeyú and Itapúa that represented 88% of the total FHU of these regions. The WHO SARA evaluation method was adapted with 82 tracer indicators, applying an online questionnaire addressed to health professionals in July 2022. The preparedness index was measured from 0 to 1 and it turned out that 66.2% of the FHU were rural and 33.8% urban. The overall readiness median was 0.655 while the median diagnostic power was 0.500, the availability of essential medicines 0.625, the infrastructure 0.650, the capacity of preventing infections 0.667 and the availability of basic equipment 0.833. Only 13.89% had sufficient preparation, 75.0% intermediate and 11.11% low. There was lower performance in rural areas and 31.02% lacked full staff according to the standard. It was concluded that the FHU presented limitations to provide comprehensive health services to the communities and that it is necessary to improve performance based on periodic evaluations and adjustments.

Keywords : Primary Health Care; first level of care; health services assesment; universal health care; Paraguay.

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