Quality of home visits by community health workers in primary care and associated factors

Abstract

Objective: to evaluate community health workers’ and quality of home visits associated factors. Method: a cross-sectional study of 38,865 teams and 140,444 Primary Care Access and Quality Improvement Program users. We established the “quality of home visits” and its association with the characteristics of the municipalities, teams and individuals, estimated by the prevalence ratio and 95% confidence intervals. Results: 139,362 (99.2%) users said the health team had community workers. The prevalence of quality was 51.9%. After adjustments, the prevalence was higher in the Northeast (Prevalence Ratio: 1.19 [1.18-1.21]), smaller municipalities (PR: 1.06 [1.03-1.09]), among teams with area definition (PR: 1.15 [1.06-1.25]), evaluation of indicators (PR: 1.14 [1.12-1.17]) and user satisfaction (PR: 1.11 [1.08-1.13]), that considered risk and vulnerability criteria for defining the number of people under responsibility (PR: 1.05 [1.04-1.07]) and without an uncovered population of workers (PR: 1.03 [1.01-1.04]); among users with chronic diseases (PR: 1.02 [1.01-1.05]) and with someone at home with walking difficulties (PR: 1.05 [1.02-1.07]). Conclusion: the importance of organizing the teams’ work process for the quality of the worker’s home visits and their role in health equity is highlighted.