[Health care user satisfaction in Pernambuco State, Brazil, 2005]

Researching the users' satisfaction is a key task for management. With the Project for Strengthening the Evaluation Capacity of the State, the Pernambuco Health Secretariat has defined to evaluate the health system performance as priority. The current study aimed to know the factors associated with the users' satisfaction of the Pernambuco health system. It was an evaluative study based on the results obtained in a population survey carried out on 2005 in Pernambuco. The data analysis considered the use of multivariate methods and the satisfaction as dependent variable. The main analyzed aspects were the professionals quality, the health services quality and the health system resolubility. The analysis has revealed that the waiting time for health care and the availability of medicines were the factors with the lowest percentage of users' satisfaction, what generate reflections about if the access has been actually related to the offering of health services, adequate or not to the people demands and the pharmaceutical assistance policy in the state. In conclusion, it was possible to obtain a more complete overview about how the health system of Pernambuco has attended the people expectations by the users perspectives.