Salary of physicians hired by the Family Health Strategy Program and the municipalities’ context: an ecological study

ABSTRACT Salary is an important factor of attraction, fixation and satisfaction of physicians in Primary Health Care (PHC), mainly in the most remote or poor regions. This study aims to identify characteristics related to municipalities that are associated to salaries paid to physicians hired from the Family Health Strategy (FHS) Program. An ecological and cross-sectional study was conducted with 78 municipalities of the Northern Health Macro-region of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. The dependent variable referred to the amount paid to the physicians hired from FHS. Twenty-two contextual independent variables were applied, including sociodemographic characteristics, location and health and care indicators of each municipality, all collected from public databases. Multiple Linear Regression was conducted. The outcome average salary was R$11,188.61 (±R$2,093.71), ranging from R$6,388.20 to R$17,000.00. After adjusting the model, only the variable ‘Distance from Regional Center’ remained positively associated to the outcome (R2=6.4%). The conclusion is that the salaries of physicians were not determined by measurable contextual municipal characteristics. Other more subjective and difficult to measure factors may be involved in the issue. Therefore, there is need to establish clear parameters so to define the salaries of physicians hired to work for FHS.