Medium-complexity hospitals in the Emergency Care Network: what does their production reveal?

ABSTRACT The objective of this study aimed to analyze the performance of two general public hospitals of medium complexity in the Attention to Emergency Care Network of a health region, according to hospital production data. A cross-sectional, descriptive and quantitative study was carried out, with secondary data for the period from January 2016 to June 2017, obtained from hospitals, municipal audit service, Hospital Information System of the Unified Health System and Brazilian National Registry of Healthcare Establishments. It was evidenced that 96.2% and 97.4% of the attendances at hospital A and B, respectively, were from citizens; the average of 70.8% of the attendances in both hospitals was not regulated, being 72.3% and 65.2% for hospital A and B, respectively, with access by spontaneous search. A low number of emergency heal care that evolve to hospitalization was identified; Primary Care Sensitive Conditions represented an average, in both hospitals, of 39.3% (17%-20% of hospitalization expenses). Although constituting regional references, these hospitals showed low performance in emergency care to users from other municipalities, revealing the need to expand access to health services, especially local, and seeking the qualification of regional regulatory and communicative mechanisms to qualify access to the studied hospitals.