Use of Telehealth technologies in Mais Médicos Program – Espírito Santo, 2016

Abstract

Telehealth is key to primary health care qualification. There is no knowledge about its use in the Mais Médicos Program. Here, we sought to analyze the use of Telehealth tools at Mais Médicos in Espírito Santo state in 2016. This is a cross-sectional study with a structured questionnaire applied to the total number of physicians present at regional telehealth seminars. The analysis included absolute and relative frequency and bivariate analysis with Fisher's exact test. As a result, 211 doctors (48.6% of the total number of professionals at Mais Médicos) participated. The majority were Cubans who worked in a large urban center with a specialization in Family and Community Medicine. Most (n=130, 61.9%) had already used some Telehealth service, but discontinuously, with Tele-education being the most used (n=101; 77.7%). Getting to know Telehealth and its tools and seeing them as relevant to improving the service were associated with greater use of technologies. The facility and type of device used to access the internet do not influence the use of the program. It is concluded that the knowledge and relevance given to Telehealth tools by professionals and their work context are more associated with their use than structural working conditions.