[Transit of users between hospitals from different states and institutions]

To describe and quantify hospital services given by units of the Ministry of Health (MoH) to patients with social security or living in states different to those where the hospitals are located.

With data from the automatized system for hospital discharges patients were classified, according to the place of living, into locals or outsiders; and, according to their insurance status, into social security beneficiaries or not beneficiaries. Frequencies of services for these groups were estimated, and characteristics of patients and services were described.

5.6% of patients of MoH hospitals were outsiders. This percentage reaches 50% in the National Institutes of Health. Only 1.7% of the patients had social security insurance. Sociodemographic and services characteristics are quite different between outsiders or social security patients and those without those attributes.

Despite its segmentation, in the National Health System there is a continuous process of exchange of services between different providers.