[Methodology for the assessment of activities in primary health care]

A case study assessed health care activities in a primary health care facility to help develop methodologies of care work assessment and of the proposal of leading categories for the said processes, based on the work process. This study was developed at the Centro de Saúde Escola of the Faculdade de Medicina of the Universidade de São Paulo, using as empirical material the assessment of the care activities aimed at the emergency care and programmed care of 'chronic' patients (patients suffering from hypertension and diabetes). The analysis of these assessments which considered different moments of the work process (working objects, activity of agents, analysis of the working means and result of the work) suggest the need of creating analytical categories that will make workable the understanding of this process, inserting each moment to the work as a whole. The analytical categories proposed are: 1) workability as a means of making effective the proposed actions; 2) strategic effectiveness as a measure of the scope of the results that have been observed among patients and/or the population and that can be the result of the actions performed.