Use of Telehealth Resources in Primary Care and Its Association with Facing the COVID-19 Pandemic in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Introduction: Use of telehealth (TH) resources increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study set out to examine associations between the level of integration of TH resources and the level of Primary Health Care (PHC) structuring to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Methods: This work was a cross-sectional study conducted through the application of a semistructured questionnaire to a sample of 260 PHC Teams working in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, from September to December 2020. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee and logged under report number 44.294.637. Results: Two variables were created - Level of the PHC structuring to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and Level of TH structuring. Variables were grouped into five categories (poor to excellent). Associations between variables were examined using the Tukey's test for multiple comparisons and the Spearman correlation coefficient. Variables associated with socioeconomic dimensions (human development index and Gini index) and health care were also analyzed. Levels of TH structuring in PHC ranged from poor (43%) to regular (40%) in most cases. Most PHC teams had regular (56%) or good (37%) levels of PHC structuring to deal with the pandemic. The greater the availability and use of TH resources at a given unit, the better the structure to face COVID-19 (0.45 - p < 0.001). Conclusion: PHC was structured to tackle the pandemic. However, there is a lot to be done before TH resources are effectively incorporated into PHC. Whenever incorporated, TH resources contributed to a more robust response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quality of Telehealth Services in Primary Care in the State of Minas Gerais.

Objective: Telemedicine is seen as an important tool to face contemporary health challenges. The factors that help improve quality in these services must be studied. The objective of this work was to assess the quality of telehealth primary care services offered in the State of Minas Gerais -Brazil, based on the ISO 13131 standard. Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study with a quantitative approach was conducted in the cities in the state of Minas Gerais that use telehealth services. A stratified sample composed of 385 cities was used. A questionnaire, based on ISO 13131 on the quality of telehealth services, was prepared, used, and verified for its consistency. Quality levels in telehealth were built from the data. To analyze the quality of care, data from the Ministry of Health's quality improvement program were used, involving 366 surveyed cities. Logistic regression was performed to verify the association between quality of telehealth and quality of care. Results: The research identified that 64% of the cities had records of telehealth activities, and 51% of cities had high quality telehealth services. There was no association between quality of telehealth and quality of care; only the dimensions of Quality and Risk Management were associated with quality of care. Conclusion: The developed instrument enabled the quality of telehealth actions to be verified. The State of Minas Gerais has high-quality telehealth services.