In recent weeks, Joinville, north of Santa Catarina, has seen a growing number of people seeking care at Basic Family Health Centers (UBSF) before they open to the public.

Joinville City Develops UBSF Schedule Optimization Strategy – Photo: Secom/Prefeitura de Joinville Disclosure/ND

Joinvilenses justify queuing at night as a way to guarantee service. The Minister of Health, in turn, advises the population that there is no need to come before work begins.

To work on a project to address this issue as a matter of priority, technical specialists from the Secretariat of Health and the Secretariat for Administration and Planning, led by Secretaries Andrei Colaqueke and Ricardo Mafra, formed a working group.

“After visiting the service locations and talking to the community and our team, we identified the need to organize meetings, facilitate access. In most departments, the number of appointments we offer is sufficient. The proof of this is that there are empty seats at the end of the day,” Andrei notes.

booking online

The solution found was to implement an online treatment scheduling tool at family health bases with a flow similar to that for Covid-19 vaccination, to which even the Ministry of Health refers.

“We are going to use the successful example of vaccination planning to find a definitive solution to this problem. We are working to ensure that none of our units has a “queue at dawn”, offering the residents of Joinville more comfort and humanity,” said Mayor Adriano Silva.

An online planning tool will be available on the Joinville Fácil app. The functionality is at the final stage of development and parameterization. After that, he will pass internal tests. These activities will be developed later this week.

According to forecasts, starting next week, the functionality will become available to the public. Since this is a pilot project, implantation will initially only be performed on UBSF Comasa users.

“Our goal is for Comasa patients to use the tool under the supervision of our teams, who ensure the necessary improvements are made before rolling out the tool to other departments,” explains the mayor.