Net Promoter Score como instrumento de avaliação de serviços de saúde bucal na atenção primária à saúde

Abstract

In Brazil dental care occupies mainly the primary level of public care, a scenario that grants and provides users with a greater access to oral health services. However, the greater availability and offer does not guarantee the quality of the service provided. Therefore, the monitoring and evaluation of Primary Care is necessary to promote its constant evolution and improvement. The objective of this study is to investigate the satisfaction of users of oral health services in Primary Health Care using the Net Promoter Score. The study has a cross-sectional design and carried out an analysis of oral health in the city of Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, utilizing data collected in a survey research with 387 adult users of Family Health Units linked to a multiprofessional residency program. Different instruments for evaluating the quality of the service were used, namely the Primary Care Assessment Tool Brazil – Oral Health (PCATool), the Oral Impact on Daily Performance (OIDP) and sociodemographic variables of the population, relating to the Net Promoter Score as an outcome, an instrument still little used in public health. The evaluated service had a value of 5.29 as a general score on the PCATool and a score of +20.69 on the NPS. The Net Promoter Score was associated with other more complex and consolidated instruments on the perception of the service and the health condition of the users, with a high NPS score being associated with a high overall score for Primary Care, assessed using the PCATool instrument. This finding may indicate that it is possible to use the NPS as a simpler alternative to be applied when compared to other forms of evaluation of health services, although more studies need to be carried out in order to elucidate the real power of the NPS in the context of public health.