Contributions of the More Doctors Program to the performance of Family Health teams concerning hypertension and diabetes care in Brazil, 2012 to 2015

Objective. To compare temporal trends in access and utilization of systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) and diabetes mellitus (DM) services provided by teams with or without physicians from the More Doctors Program (PMM). Method. An analytical-descriptive design was used, with comparison of teams that joined the PMM (intervention) vs. non-participants, using a quasi-experimental time series approach. The study compared the performance of a sample of 30 000 Family Health Strategy teams in 2012 and 20 000 teams in 2015. The patterns in both groups were analyzed using the difference-in-difference technique with stratification according to geopolitical region, population size, and municipal profile. The mean number of consultations per semester was estimated by dividing the total number of DM and HAS consultations provided by physicians and nurses in a given health care team by the total number of users with DM/HAS registered in the same location and period. A mean number of consultations/user > 14.2 for DM and > 10.8 for HAS was considered as an outlier, and thus the teams with these means were excluded from the analyses. Results. The difference-in-difference analysis indicated better performance in the provision of DM (P < 0.001) and SAH (P < 0.001) services among PMM teams vs. non-PMM teams. The effect was more pronounced in the North and Northeast regions, in municipalities with more than 20% of the population living in extreme poverty, and in municipalities of all population sizes. Conclusions. The results show that the PMM increased access and utilization of health care services.