Home care as change of the technical-assistance model

To analyze home care practices of outpatient and hospital services and their constitution as a substitute healthcare network.

A qualitative study was carried out using tracer methodology to analyze four outpatient home care services from the Municipal Health Department and one service from a philanthropic hospital in the municipality of Belo Horizonte, Southeastern Brazil, between 2005 and 2007. The following procedures were carried out: interviews with the home care services' managers and teams, analysis of documents and follow-up of cases, holding interviews with patients and caregivers. The analysis was guided by the analytical categories home care integration into the healthcare network and technical-assistance model.

Home care implementation was preceded by a political-institutional decision, both with a rationalizing orientation, intending to promote cost reduction, and also with the aim of carrying out the technical-assistance rearrangement of the healthcare networks. These two types of orientation were found to be in conflict, which implies difficulties for conciliating interests of the different players involved in the network, and also the creation of shared management spaces. It was possible to identify technological innovation and families' autonomy in the implementation of the healthcare projects. The teams proved to be cohesive, constructing, in the daily routine, new forms of integrating different perspectives so as to transform the healthcare practices. Challenges were observed in the proposal of integrating the different substitutive healthcare services, as the home care services' capacity to change the technical-assistance model is limited.

Home care has potential for constituting a substitutive network by producing new care modalities that cross the projects of users, family members, social network, and home care professionals. Home care as a substitute healthcare modality requires political, conceptual and operational sustainability, as well as recognition of the new arrangements and articulation of ongoing proposals.