Use of WhatsApp by a primary care team as a strategy to deal with administrative demands

Abstract

Introduction: Primary health care is the main gateway to SUS, therefore has a diverse and quantitatively high demand. Administrative demands composed about 20% of all PHC demand, consuming a lot of time and resources. Objective: Describe how and under what circumstances the Gray Team of UBS nº 10 in Ceilândia - DF realized the implementation of WhatsApp as a strategy of remote attendance to administrative demands, clinical feedback, and to improve communication with its patients. Methods: The team was based on the guide "WhatsApp for Health Centers" prepared by the Municipal Health Department of Florianópolis with some adaptations for the local reality. Results: In addition to observing a reduction in the pressure for service, the tool brought many possibilities for the resolution of no urgent demands and supervision of programmatic actions. The reduction in pressure on the team's reception was replaced by a high flow of messages, which brought some difficulties in the organization to answer them. Conclusions: The report presented how the messaging application most used in the world can be an important ally to resolving administrative demands and monitoring patients already attended by the team. 

Keywords: Health technology; Primary health care; Health access; Telemedicine.