The re-organization of oral care in face of federal incentives: the Rio de Janeiro state experience

Abstract

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This paper is a synthesis of the Master Degree thesis named The Brazilian Oral Health National Politics: an analysis on the re-organization of oral care in Rio de Janeiro State in face of federal incentives . The article focuses the process of reorganization of the oral care services in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. This process is supposed to follow the so called Política Nacional de Saúde Bucal [Brazilian Oral Health  National Politics], whose main proposals are to prioritize primary care as part of the Family Health Strategy and to improve secondary care in oral health services in all levels of complexity.

The Health Ministry uses financial incentives to stimulate local governments to adopt, under specific conditions, the guidelines to re-organize oral care services.

The present paper is concentrated on the pioneer research done by the above mentioned about the re-organization of oral care services carried out by the 92 local governments which form Rio de Janeiro State, from January 1998 to December 2007. It analyzes oral health services in all these municipalities.

The main conclusions are that re-organization of oral care services following this politics’ principles and guidelines is an endless process for most of the municipalities being studied. The research also presents, as secondary conclusion that federal health authorities must act together with other federal, state and local health authorities to improve the population’s oral health conditions, as proposed by the Brazilian Oral Health National Politics.

Key words:  Brazilian Oral Health National Politics; Rio de JaneiroState; financial incentives; Oral Health; financing of Unified Health System.