Structure of dental radiology services in specialized healthcare in Brazil: a latent transition analysis

The aim is to analyze the structure of dental radiology services (DRS) in the Brazilian Centers of Dental Specialties (acronym in Portuguese, CEO) to identify advances and challenges. This is an ecological study using data from the external evaluation cycles (c) of the Program for Improvement of Access and Quality-CEO (c1-2014 and c2-2018). Latent class transition analysis identified latent statuses (LS) for DRS structure in CEO, with 889 CEO included. The latent transition model (3 LS) was used: (LS1) better structure for DRS (n + 377); (LS2) intermediate structure for DRS (n = 379) and (LS3) worse structure for DRS (n = 133). Latent transition analysis showed that no CEO with a "better structure" worsened between 2014 and 2018; 4.3% of CEO with intermediate structure and 16.6% of the worst transitioned to the better status, while 66.3% of CEO transitioned from the "worst" status to "intermediate" structure, demonstrating a trend of improvement. It is concluded that there was an improvement in the structure of dental radiology in Brazilian CEO, except for specialized professionals, indicating the need for restructuring the human resources policy in the Brazilian public health system - SUS.