Primary Care Assessment Tool: regional differences based on the National Health Survey from Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística.

In 2019, unprecedentedly among the official statistical institutes worldwide, the IBGE included a particular module on evaluating primary health care in its central population-based population survey, the National Health Survey (PNS-2019). The survey considered the reduced version of the Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT), developed and disseminated by Starfield and Shi, to assess the existence and extent of the structure and process characteristics of PHC services. It is the most significant probabilistic sample using this instrument ever conducted in a single country in the world that interviewed users aged 18 or over (n=9,677). The results of the Brazilian overall PCAT scores (5.9 [5.8; 5.9]) point to significant regional and intraregional contrasts, with the South of the country standing out with the best evaluations of primary care services (overall score = 6.3 [6.2; 6.5]) and the North with the worse (overall score = 5,5 [5,3; 5,7]). There were also statistically significant and more favorable differences between residents of households registered by family health teams, among older adults, and those using health services the most (adults with reported morbidities).