Urgent and Emergency Health Care Network Policy in Brazil: influence and text production contexts

Abstract

The article aims to analyze the contexts of influence and text production of the Urgent and Emergency Care Networks (RUE) policy in Brazil through the Policy Cycle Approach. Qualitative research was carried out through document analysis of legal texts, technical, and academic publications to analyze the contexts of influence and production of RUE texts, not being the object of this study the context of practice. The context of influences evidenced the dispute for the legitimacy of the SUS, neoliberalism, underfunding, managerialism, the hospital crisis, and the predominance of the health care network model. The texts, on the other hand, express values of citizenship, access, quality and comprehensiveness; purposes of nationalization and improvement of response time; influences from the previous policy of urgency and humanization, the area of hospital administration and concepts from the field of collective health. The plural and multifaceted character of the policy can bring challenges in the context of practice, to be researched in future studies, due to the need to develop and articulate different ideas and practices identified in the texts and resulting from multiple and diverse influences. Still, these can be resignified and crossed by vectors and disputes in fields of unique practices of decentralized and diverse management in the country, in the different services, municipalities and health regions.

Keywords:
Delivery of health care; Emergency medical services; Health Policy