Implementation of the Manchester Risk Classification System in emergency municipal network

ABSTRACT Hospital and non-hospital urgent and emergency healthcare services are commonly used as entrance doors of healthcare systems. The hypothesis of the excess demand for these services is insufficient to explain the unfavorable clinical outcomes that result from the overcrowding phenomenon, related to organizational aspects of these services themselves. Considering this scenario, the reorganization of the inputs of the urgency and emergency health services has become paramount. This paper presents and analyses the Manchester Triage System implementation in a municipal urgency and emergency network in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, the largest one in the South hemisphere, and allows to understand how the improvement of the use of the risk classification, foreseen in several policies of the Unified Health System, can be a powerful technology applied to care management and urgency and emergency health services.