Preventable inadequate hospitalizations in primary health care: current challenge as a social problem

Abstract

Inadequate hospitalization implies unnecessary costs to the patient's family and the health center, congestion of hospital services and reduction of social benefit, and may expose the patient to risks such as nosocomial infections and periods of stress. It also represents a social problem, due to deficiencies in the training of residents in Comprehensive General Medicine in pathologies that are adequately diagnosed, treated and monitored at the primary level—which undermine the quality and intersectorality between the secondary and primary levels of care—, and the rational use of resources in the health sector. This work aims to address the situation of inadequate hospitalizations, which can be solved at the primary care level. A bibliographic review was carried out of scientific articles related to the subject, published in SciELO, LILACS, PubMed, EBSCO and Google Scholar, which contributed to compile texts with the most recent contributions. In order to reduce preventable hospitalizations, it is necessary to reinforce organizational actions and quality professional performance at the primary level, with strategies aimed at solving the problems of the population. Deficiencies or irregularities in the resolution capacity of the primary care system have a negative impact on the amount of hospital care for preventable health situations and, therefore, on the reduction of hospital costs.