[Consumer satisfaction study in philanthropic hospital health plans]

This paper presents the findings of research aimed at identifying and analyzing the argumentation and rationale that justify the satisfaction of consumers with their health plans. The qualitative method applied used the focus group technique, for which the following aspects were defined: the criteria for choosing the health plans which were considered, the composition of the group and its distribution, recruitment strategy, and infrastructure and dynamics of the meetings. The health plan beneficiaries were classified into groups according to their social class, the place where they lived, mainly, the relationship that they established with the health plan operators which enabled us to develop a typology for the plan beneficiaries. Initially, we indicated how the health plan beneficiaries assess and use the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), and, then, considering the types of plans defined, we evaluated their degree of satisfaction with the different aspects of health care, and identified which aspects mostly contributed explain their satisfaction.