An experience of a care home in northeastern Brazil

Abstract

Home care in Brazil is still precarious. In most regions, it is restricted to treatment of patients with low complexity performed by primary care with the intention of prevention and promotion health. Until 2010, there was not a national policy for home care patients with greater complexity. In most cases they remained hospitalized or care poorly in their houses, suffering from recurrent hospitalizations.

On March 19 last year, the Institute of Medicine Professor Fernando Figueira with the secretary of health of the city of Recife, started one Home Care Services. Already received 139 patients, aged between 13 and 101 years, with various pathologies, children with cerebral palsy, young adult sequelae of gunshot trauma, bedridden woman infected with HTLV, oncology patients and elderly patients with dementia. As a result of this care, there was a reduction in the rate of emergency room visits, hospitalizations, in addition to improved quality of life. Also the quality of death, because it was possible to die at home without having to be referred to the autopsy service to receive the death certificate. But we believe that the best achievement was to show that the daily cost of this service is 10 times smaller than the ICU and three times smaller than a hospital bed. With this we motivate an argument for deployment of a national policy.