Longitudinality of primary health care: an evaluation from the perspective of users

Objective: research aims to evaluate the longitudinality of Primary Health Care (PHC) from the perspective of its users, verifying the association between the population size, Human Development Index (HDI) and Family Health Strategy (FHS) coverage among the municipalities of a Regional Health Coordination in the Southern region of Brazil. Method: cross-sectional study, conducted with 1,076 PHC adult users from 32 municipalities of the 4^th Regional Health Coordination of Rio Grande do Sul, from February to June 2015. Data were collected with the Adult Primary Care Assessment Tool and analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software. The Mann-Whitney and Kruskal Wallis tests were used to compare the means. Results: the level of affiliation had a high score (8.6; CI95%: 8.5-8.8) and the longitudinality obtained an unsatisfactory score (6.4; CI95%: 6.3-6.5). The fragilities related to the attribute were the interpersonal relationship between users and professionals; the recognition of users in their comprehensiveness, and the preparation of professionals to assist users. Longitudinality was better evaluated in municipalities with lower population size, lower HDI and higher FHS coverage. Conclusion: longitudinality is unsatisfactory and reveals the need for reorienting PHC and conducting vocational training. However, the greater coverage of FHS suggests that this care model contributes to qualify this attribute.