Performance of the local health system and contingent influences in Northeast-Brazil: breaking vicious and virtuous circles.

Organizational theory has long emphasized the importance of contingent, environmental influences on organizational performance. Similarly, research has demonstrated the importance of local political culture and informal management on the performance of the local health system, establishing vicious and virtuous circles of influence that contribute to increasing inequalities in performance among decentralized local health systems. A longitudinal ethnography studied the relationship between these elements in the same rural municipality in Northeast Brazil after a four-year interval. The second study found the local health system performance much improved. Two main factors appear to have interacted to bring this about: leadership vision and power to implement of one individual; professionalization of the local health system by hiring a significant number of senior health staff. The origins of these influences combine initiatives at local, state and federal levels.

Performance of the local health system and contingent influences in Northeast-Brazil: breaking vicious and virtuous circles / Performance do sistema de saúde local e influências contingentes no Nordeste do Brasil: quebrando círculos viciosos e virtuosos

INTRODUCTION: Organizational theory has long emphasized the importance of contingent, environmental influences on organizational performance. Similarly, research has demonstrated the importance of local political culture and informal management on the performance of the local health system, establishing vicious and virtuous circles of influence that contribute to increasing inequalities in performance among decentralized local health systems. OBJECTIVE: A longitudinal ethnography studied the relationship between these elements in the same rural municipality in Northeast Brazil after a four-year interval. The second study found the local health system performance much improved. Two main factors appear to have interacted to bring this about: leadership vision and power to implement of one individual; professionalization of the local health system by hiring a significant number of senior health staff. CONCLUSION: The origins of these influences combine initiatives at local, state and federal levels.

A teoria organizacional tem enfatizado por muito tempo a importância de influências contingentes e ambientais na performance e desempenho organizacional. Igualmente, pesquisas também demonstram a importância da cultura política local e de fatores informais na gerência e desempenho do sistema local de saúde, estabelecendo círculos viciosos e virtuosos que influenciam e contribuem para aumentar as desigualdades nos sistemas descentralizados da saúde. OBJETIVO: entender a inter-relação entre estes elementos em um município rural localizado no Nordeste do Brasil em um intervalo de quatro anos. MÉTODO: Com base em um estudo etnográfico longitudinal com intevalo do quatro anos. RESULTADOS: No segundo momento da pesquisa foi constatado que o desempenho do sistema local de saúde tinha melhorado. Dois fatores principais parecem ter interagido para causar essa melhoria: a visão e o poder de liderança de um indivíduo; e a profissionalização do sistema local de saúde a partir da contratação de um número significativo de profissionais. CONCLUSÃO: As origens destes fatores podem ser encontradas nas esferas local, estadual e federal.

Explanatory models of influences on the construction and expression of user satisfaction.

The paper asks why high levels of expressed satisfaction are recorded in settings where health care provision is manifestly inadequate. Qualitative interviews with 30 women aged 25-60 years from a rural district health system of Northeast Brazil were used to explore the applicability of three explanatory models of influences on the construction and expression of satisfaction: expectations; contextual dynamics; mediating filters. The first two of these models argue that a lack of information and a reluctance to be negative respectively lead to high expressed satisfaction that is artificial. The concept of mediating filters proposes that respondents construct an evaluation that takes account of wider issues, such that high levels of expressed satisfaction are, in this sense, real. All three models contribute towards answering the paper's question. However, our data suggest that it is an informed, but low, expectation of health care provision that leads to alternative strategies, including resort to patron-client networks, and success in gaining good health care that is important. Mediating filters identified in this study were culpability and the reference time-frame. We raise questions for practice and offer a combined explanatory model.

Health Reform in Ceará: the process of decentralisation in the 1990s.

The objective of this article is to offer an overview of the health reform in Ceará focusing on the decentralisation process in the 1990s. The driving factor behind the Brazilian health reform movement was the necessity to reorganise the national health system and overcome inequalities. For the reformists, decentralisation, and together with it the idea of popular participation, is seen as essential to guarantee the fulfilment of the people's needs and to incorporate their voice in the decision-making processes of the health system. In the state of Ceará, after the 1986 elections, health reform movement members took control over the management of the state Health Secretariat. This is the main cause of the acceleration of the decentralisation process with the transference of responsibility over the management of health care delivery to municipalities.

Promotion and prevention within a decentralized framework: changing health care in Brazil and Chile.

The study aims to define configurations of factors from local, regional and national levels that, within a context of decentralized health systems, enable or hinder change towards a health care model of promotion and disease prevention as advocated in current Latin American public health discourse. The project made in-depth case studies of prevention and promotion activities in eight local health systems in rural and urban Brazil and Chile allowing three levels of comparison: national, regional and local. The data are based on interviews, secondary sources, policy documentation and observations. The results are summarized as pathways through configurations of factors leading to what are termed active and basic degrees of activity related to disease prevention and health promotion at the local level. The results raise considerations for policy-makers at each of the three levels of health systems regarding vertical and horizontal system structures, relationships to local government, management options and human resource incentives. The findings from this study can serve as a guide or menu of issues to consider in the implementation of new models of health care provision, not only in Brazil and Chile, but also elsewhere in Latin America and more widely in the world.

Prevention and promotion in decentralized rural health systems: a comparative study from northeast Brazil.

Policies to reform health care provision often combine the organizational restructuring of decentralization with ideological restructuring through a new model of health care that gives greater weight to prevention and promotion. Decentralization provides a discretionary space to the local health system to define and develop its own activities. The central policy aim to shift the model of health care therefore must rely on incentives rather than directives and is likely to result in variation at local levels in the extent and mode of its implementation. The local processes affecting variation in local implementation of policies for prevention and promotion have not been studied in a developing country. This study does so by comparing two rural health systems with different levels of prevention and promotion activities in one of the poorest regions of Brazil, Ceará State in the northeast. The health system with greater activities of prevention and promotion also has a more advanced stage of decentralization, but this is in combination with many other, interacting influences that differentiate the two health systems' ability to adopt and implement new approaches. While beyond the scope of this paper to detail options for regional and national managers to encourage the adoption of a greater focus on prevention and promotion, it is clear that strategies needs to target not only the vision and actions of local health system staff, but critically also the expectations of the local population and the attitudes of local government.

Implementation of promotion and prevention activities in decentralized health systems: comparative case studies from Chile and Brazil.

The policies for restructuring health systems in Latin America during the 1990s have included an emphasis on changing in the model of health care delivery to one that incorporates prevention and promotion activities. At the same time, health systems have been decentralized in their management, allowing room for greater variation in local interpretation and implementation of policy directives. Despite rhetoric and policy debate, there is no documentation or evaluation of actual experiences of prevention and promotion within decentralized health systems in Latin America. This paper explores the ways in which the national structure of a health system influences the implementation of activities for prevention and promotion through a comparison of the experiences in four local health systems in each of Brazil and Chile. These experiences in Brazil and Chile are presented by key themes of national health system structure, local health system structure, partnership and intersectorality, human resources and introducing a family health approach. Five clear factors emerge as operating at the national level that influence prevention and promotion activities in local health systems: vertical (Chile) versus horizontal (Brazil) structure of health system; greater awareness of prevention and promotion issues in Chile; greater urban bias in Chile compared with Brazil; strategies to attract human resources to primary care and rural areas; importance of local capacity building especially in rural areas. This account of case study experiences in Brazil and Chile provides a series of examples of arrangements and strategies that can facilitate implementation and usefully highlights a number of issues that policy-makers and health system managers need explicitly to consider. As such, the paper hopes to provoke debate about the structures and strategies for supporting the implementation of prevention and promotion programmes in Latin America and further health systems research in this field.

Individual and district scale determinants of users' satisfaction with primary health care in developing countries.

The paper has two aims: to explore possible determinants of user satisfaction based on a broad conception of the health care system involving both individual and district scale variables, and to add to the limited knowledge and empirical study about such determinants in developing countries. The study was carried out in one of Brazil's poorest states, Ceará, in the northeast of the country. Brazil has a policy of an increased role for the population in management together with decentralised management to the local administrative (municipio) scale. For user views on health care to be useful in management, understanding their determinants needs to explore not only individual scale factors but also influences from the local health system and wider society, here termed district scale factors. The study design took different angles on users' satisfaction to build three measures: the particular health event (termed perceived quality); a generalised perception (termed satisfaction); and, satisfaction with the Community Health Worker (termed CHW satisfaction). Potential determinants explored at the individual scale (17 variables) are grouped into: socio-demographic and economic characteristics; health outcome; health care provision; and, awareness of space for local voice in planning. Potential determinants explored at the district scale (50 variables) are grouped into: formal organisation and management (health system inputs, management capacity, outputs and outcomes); informal organisation (population awareness of health system activities, staff characteristics, district management style); and, local political culture (geographic and socio-economic population profile, commitment to the district of local leaders, norms and values of staff regarding practice). Three determinants were key for all three user evaluation measures: getting an appointment, getting better, and the type of district (rural-urban). Our primary conclusion from this study is that there are limitations to the extent that user satisfaction can fulfill the claims made for it. On a more positive note, with these limitations noted, user satisfaction can prove a useful management tool more modestly at a local, context-specific scale.

Back to basics: does decentralization improve health system performance? Evidence from Ceara in north-east Brazil.

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether decentralization has improved health system performance in the State of Ceara, north-east Brazil. METHODS: Ceara is strongly committed to decentralization. A survey across 45 local (municipio) health systems collected data on performance and formal organization, including decentralization, informal management and local political culture. The indicators for informal management and local political culture were based on prior ethnographic research. Data were analysed using analysis of variance, Duncan's post-hoc test and multiple regression. FINDINGS: Decentralization was associated with improved performance, but only for 5 of our 22 performance indicators. Moreover, in the multiple regression, decentralization explained the variance in only one performance indicator; indicators for informal management and political culture appeared to be more important influences. However, some indicators for informal management were themselves associated with decentralization but not any of the political culture indicators. CONCLUSION: Good management practices in the study led to decentralized local health systems rather than vice versa. Any apparent association between decentralization and performance seems to be an artefact of the informal management, and the wider political culture in which a local health system is embedded strongly influences the performance of local health systems.

Political cultures, health systems and health policy.

Policies for restructuring national health systems in low- and middle-income countries tend to follow similar packages of prescriptions along the lines of those discussed in the World Development Report of 1993. An ubiquitous reform measure is that of decentralisation. Research on decentralised health care in Northeast Brazil demonstrates the critical role played by informal aspects of health system management and the political cultures of the wider context on the implementation of policy and the performance of local health systems. Discussion of incorporating these results into policy making highlights a number of points. Health systems research has failed to take seriously the role of the cultural for various reasons, particularly because of the challenge it makes to our own fundamental values and because of the difficulties of including it into approaches based on rational systems models. At the same time, health system researchers cannot easily draw upon and operationalise more complex and sophisticated explorations of the nature of the cultural domain. Nonetheless, without a concerted effort to engage with this literature, to bridge the gap to the applied policy world and tackle the challenge of incorporating considerations of political culture into policy making, health system management through decentralisation is likely to increase inequalities between local districts rather than the opposite.

Anthropology in research on the quality of health services

A presente crise no setor saúde causou uma expansao da pesquisa ligada à qualidade dos serviços de saúde. Pesquisas na área de saúde pública ligadas à qualidade dos serviços geralmente avaliavam o uso ou nao de critérios predefinidos para edificaçoes, equipamentos e procedimentos técnicos. Enfoca a contribuiçao que a antropologia pode dar para a pesquisa em qualidade de serviços e inclui critérios populares na avaliaçao da qualidade. Métodos de avaliaçao rápida de critérios populares indicam que os conflitos entre os provedores e os usuários dos serviços de saúde sao decorrentes apenas de divergências quanto a modelos explanatórios e, sendo assim, podem ser resolvidos através de treinamento e educaçao. A abordagem holística em antropologia demonstra que a questao da qualidade de serviços deve ser vista dentro do contexto da estrutura dos serviços de saúde, das circunstâncias sócio-econômicas da vida dos usuários e das diferenças entre os modelos médicos e populares de saúde