The contracting policy of teaching hospitals: what did actually change?

The Teaching Hospital Restructuring Program was introduced as a strategy to fight the crisis in this sector. It brings to new funding, management and relationship standards between teaching hospitals and health system. This study presents the results obtained from a multiple case study involving four teaching hospitals whose contracts were executed in 2004.

Nurses and the Manchester: rearranging the work process and emergency care?

Objective: to understand the changing roles of nurses in labor division organization in hospitals from the Manchester Triage System implementation in an emergency hospital.

Methods: this is an ethnographic study that used different production techniques and data analysis.

Results: the Manchester Triage System organized flows and places resulting in quality of care and changes in work processes.

[Physicians and management of emergency hospitals: professional power threatened?].

Kanban is a technical arrangement for the organization of hospital care focused on the management of beds and clinical care, aimed at the quality and comprehensiveness of care and greater hospital bed turnover, and thus a reduction in length-of-stay and hospital costs. The system's most striking and innovative feature is constant, updated patient follow-up, shared by the professional team in systematic meetings. Characterize the probable impacts from the arrangement's adoption on physicians' professional power (autonomy and authority).

Nurses in the Kanban: are there news meanings of professional practice in innovative tools for hospital care management?

Kanban is a care management tool that values multi-professional work and intensive use of data and has been growingly used in Brazil to address overcrowding in hospital emergency services (HES). The researchers monitored the Kanban for ten months in multiple wards of a municipal HES, and their observations were recorded in field diaries and discussed in biweekly research team meetings. The empirical material was organized from two questions: Are there changes in "traditional attributions" of Kanban-operating nursing? Are Medicine-Nursing interprofessional relationships transformed? A strong nurse adherence to this tool was observed, coupled with greater specialization and fragmentation of their work: nurses working as diarists assume more traditional administrative functions, while those on-call develop more direct assistance to patients.

[Neither a hero nor a villain: elements of medical practice in primary care].

This article describes the elements present in medical practice that contribute to understand its acknowledged low adhesion to the guidelines set forth by the Brazilian Primary Health Care (PHC) Policy. The empirical material produced by the two investigations of a qualitative nature led by the research team were put into use. In the first, in interviews involving managers and social control in cities the State of São Paulo, Brazil, physicians (acknowledged as central professionals for the construction of the Brazilian Unified Health System - SUS), are referred to as important assets to explain the difficulties to form a qualified primary health care service: the so-called "villain physicians.

Notes on persistent challenges for basic health care in Brazil.

In recent decades, Brazil has witnessed a proposal to create an extensive basic health care network as the main portal of entry to a universal public health system. Based on the recognition of consistent strides in that direction, the article addresses four issues on some important challenges for the consolidation of the basic health care proposal: (1) the use of the term "basic health care" as opposed to the usual, hegemonic concept of "primary health care"; (2) the disconnect or mismatch between the policy's wording and its real-life implementation, underscoring the need for a review of the Brazilian National Basic Health Care Policy (PNAB), which centralizes and standardizes rules and routines for the entire country while overlooking Brazil's continental dimensions, heterogeneity, and wide local diversity; (3) the isolation of basic health care and its peripheral position in the health system, pointing to the need for more complex arrangements in the coordination of care, not left merely under the organization and responsibility of basic health care; and (4) the lack of health policymakers, administrators, and professionals who are prepared and aligned with a project aimed at transforming the country's prevailing health care model.

Lay agency and the generation of public-private mix health care maps.

This paper discusses part of the results obtained from a study carried out in two cities of the so-called ABCD Paulista Region in the period 2010-2012, in an attempt to spot the existence of non-state regulatory rationale towards access and consumption of health care services. The first stage includes interviews carried out with strategic stakeholders (managers and politicians) and key workers players. The second stage collected the stories of 18 very frequent users of health care services.

[Lay agency and healthcare: producing healthcare maps].

This study aimed to characterize which regulatory logics (other than government regulation) result in healthcare output, using a two-stage qualitative study in two municipalities in the ABCD Paulista region in São Paulo State, Brazil. The first stage included interviews with strategic actors (managers and policymakers) and key health professionals. The second phase collected life histories from 18 individuals with high health-services utilization rates.

[Users and the technological transition in the supplemental health sector: case study of a health insurance plan company].

This paper presents the results obtained from qualitative research conducted with a group of users involved in Case Management, a program which was developed by a company of a medical group to provide healthcare for patients in situations of high vulnerability. The study sought to create a perspective in which the experience of the user, instead of representing merely additional or superimposed information upon the quality of services, is considered an inherent part of the arrangement under scrutiny, with the ability to highlight its internal qualities and contradictions. The results show how patients attribute high value to the healthcare they receive, with special emphasis on the bond that is created with the health team in charge, even when contact is only by telephone.

[Primary healthcare and the construction of thematic health networks: what role can they play?].

The enhancement of primary healthcare has been a core strategy for the empowerment of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS). Recent guidelines issued by OPAS and the Ministry of Health highlight the role it has played as a thematic communication network center, a regulating agent for the access and use of services required for comprehensive healthcare. Sponsored by PPSUS/Fapesp, this study examines the possibilities of the primary healthcare network exercising such a strategic function.

Collective and decentralized management model in public hospitals: perspective of the nursing team.

This research aims to present the implementation of the collective and decentralized management model in functional units of a public hospital in the city of Ribeirão Preto, state of São Paulo, according to the view of the nursing staff and the health technical assistant. This historical and organizational case study used qualitative thematic content analysis proposed by Bardin for data analysis. The institution started the decentralization of its administrative structure in 1999, through collective management, which permitted several internal improvements, with positive repercussion for the care delivered to users.

[Management committees in health services: an empirical study].

The aim of the article, based on field data collected from a continuing education program for primary health clinic administrators, was to analyze the functioning of a health service management strategy called "management committees". Different meanings and operational modalities emerged in the committees. Various antimonies appeared in the way the committees operate (autonomy versus heteronomy, reproduction of "instituted" versus "instituting" processes, and communicative versus instrumental reasoning), thus reflecting the level of complexity in this management mechanism.

[Nursing diagnoses of elderly patients using multiple drugs].

Considering that elderly people using multiple drugs are prone to a higher vulnerability of their health conditions, in this study we proposed to identify nursing diagnoses, according to NANDA's taxonomy II, in a group of elderly people who use five or more drugs. Sixty-seven elderly people were selected using the Wide Geriatric Evaluation (WGE), out of 301 elderly residents from a Family Health Program (PSF) unit. All of the 67 seniors presented a total 16 diagnostic categories, an average of 5.

[Use of medicines by the elderly in a Family Health Program unit in Brazil].

The use of multiple medicines is frequent among the elderly. Although such practice is usually necessary, it predisposes to risks of adverse events and drug interaction. The present study was intended to verify the characteristics of medication among the elderly in relation to socio-demographic profile, the most commonly used drug classes, and treatment adherence.

[Government regulation of the private health care market in Brazil: a history of disputes].

This paper reconstructs the dispute between the main social actors with direct interests in the regulation of private health care in Brazil during the period immediately prior to the passage of Act 9.656/98, highlighting the divergences between these actors in relation to 28 central topics for shaping the regulatory framework prevailing in the country since 1998. The material used in the description and systematization of the positions in the regulatory dispute resulted from an empirical, descriptive, comparative study based on document analysis and interviews with key actors.

[Hospitals and health professional education: contemporary challenges].

Both the role of hospitals in health professionals education and hospital's needs in terms of professionals for health care and hospital management are changing as health systems move towards quality, comprehensiveness, efficiency and costs control. The article intends to analyze dilemmas and challenges in each of these fields, acknowledging hospitals' complexity, their critical role on healthcare delivery and their deep involvement in the hegemonic orientation for health education and practice.

[Can conflict be used as the "raw material" for health services management?].

The author examines the possibility of understanding ordinary conflicts within health care organizations as a management object. He thus proposes the use of an "analytical matrix" aimed at allowing the actors involved in conflictive situations (always in a self-analytical position) to achieve a broader understanding of such conflicts. There would be new possibilities for contractibility in the management of the health service's daily routine, as well as new shapes in the relations among workers; this would include bringing previously concealed conflicts to the surface and helping them reach the service's decision-making arena.

[Humanization of healthcare services and the right to healthcare].

This article discusses the possibilities and limits of proposals for the humanization of healthcare. The theoretical references utilized are the concept of "reification" as a causative explanation for the process of man's estrangement from his world and the concept of "radical needs" as a possible way of overcoming traditionalist humanism to achieve transformative practice. From these notions, an understanding of the difficulties and contributions of the movement towards humanization is sought, highlighting the interdependence and limits of sectoral changes within healthcare in light of society's concepts and general values.

[Financial incentives for employees as part of a policy to upgrade care in a public hospital in Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil].

The authors present and analyze six years of regular and steady application of an institutional evaluation policy based on financial incentives in a public hospital in Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, as a part of the hospital's administrative modernization policy. This type of policy is considered implicitly capable of developing a sequence of strategic wagers: (1) release of financial resources for payment of bonuses; (2) creation of an operationally feasible and sensitive evaluation instrument; (3) creation of adequate management mechanisms to improve evaluation policy; (4) employee adherence to the hospital upgrading policy based on the bonus system; and (5) maintenance of the effects of evaluation policy over time. The article discusses the "degree of success" of each of these wagers in an attempt to portray possible gains throughout the process, while also identifying inherent difficulties in such a policy.