Abstract
Evaluate hearing health service under the users' perspective according to the aspects: access, care, communication, and professional competence, and its correlation with clinical, sociodemographic and assistance characteristics. This is an observational analytic cross-sectional study with a probability sample stratified by gender and age. The Hearing Health Care Assessment questionnaire and the Brazilian Economic Classification Criterion questionnaire were used. In total, 214 users were interviewed, which were assisted from May 2009 to May 2013. It was observed that most of the evaluated users are female, elderly, literate, presenting moderate degree of hearing impairment, who had access to transportation out-of-pocket, was submitted to ENT evaluation for diagnosis and sought the service to purchase a hearing aid, besides belonging to class C. Regarding user satisfaction, most were satisfied with access, hearing evaluation, personalized service, benefit for the family, communication and information, and professional competence. In the analysis of correlation between the scores, it was found that when users are satisfied with access, as well as with communication and information, the total score increases with moderate correlation coefficient. The users showed greater satisfaction with the professional competence domain and lower satisfaction with the benefit for the family. In addition, assessment proved that access and communication are considered important quality indicators for the hearing health service according to users.
Highlights
With the development of Política Nacional de Atenção à Saúde Auditiva (PNASA) [National Policy for Hearing Health Care] in October 2004, the Ministry of Health provides for full medical care for hearing impaired persons, with actions to promote health, prevention and rehabilitation
The medium and high-complexity hearing health care services advocated by PNASA present actions for hearing rehabilitation, provides for fitting of the personal sound amplification devices (PSAP), professional medical and speech-language follow-up, adjustments and periodical checks of the technical conditions and benefits obtained from PSAPs, speech-language therapy, and social and psychological assistance[2]
The following presented in higher proportion: the elderly age range (61.7%), incomplete primary education (48.4%), moderate hearing loss degree (45.2%), access to transportation out-of-pocket (98.1%), otorhinolaryngological evaluation for diagnosis (49.5%), and people that sought the service for the personal sound amplification device (59.1%)
Summary
With the development of Política Nacional de Atenção à Saúde Auditiva (PNASA) [National Policy for Hearing Health Care] in October 2004, the Ministry of Health provides for full medical care for hearing impaired persons, with actions to promote health, prevention and rehabilitation. The medium and high-complexity hearing health care services advocated by PNASA present actions for hearing rehabilitation, provides for fitting of the personal sound amplification devices (PSAP), professional medical and speech-language follow-up, adjustments and periodical checks of the technical conditions and benefits obtained from PSAPs, speech-language therapy, and social and psychological assistance[2]. Several studies describe quality indicators of hearing health care and management[1,4,5,6,7] as a way to contribute to the actions developed by health care public policies in Brazil. Results of evaluative research may point to the weaknesses of a program, the organizational weaknesses and gaps around problems existent at various levels and layers of the Unified Health Care System[8]
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