[Advances and challenges of the Unified Health System planning]

Since the Unified Health System creation, managers have been expending efforts to discuss the planning and, made attempts to institutionalize it, considering that it's a basic management component. However, despite advances obtained, there are aspects that are priorities and that constitute challenges for the institutionalization of the planning at the Unified Health System. In this direction, this study describes the planning evolution in the system, by legal and technician material analysis of published documents by Ministry of Health. From the planning conception in these publications, it leads a reflection on the used approach, considering the established management instruments, and its entailing to the more currently accepted theory and methodology of health planning. Aspects that need to be observed are pointed for the effectiveness to ascendant planning at the Unified Health System.