Análise dos custos assistenciais de uma operadora de plano de saúde no Brasil

The relevance of rising healthcare costs is a main topic in complementary health companies in Brazil. In 2011, these expenses consumed more than 80% of the monthly health insurance in Brazil. Considering the administrative costs, it is observed that the companies operating in this market work, on average, at the threshold between profit and loss. This paper presents results after an investigation of the welfare costs of a health plan company in Brazil. It was based on the KDD process and explorative Data Mining. A diversity of results is presented, such as data summarization, providing compact descriptions of the data, revealing common features and intrinsic observations. Among the key findings was observed that a small portion of the population is responsible for the most demanding of resources devoted to health care

Inserção e atuação profissional do psicólogo no campo das políticas sociais no Rio Grande do Norte

Since the first years of the regulation of Psychology as a profession in Brazil, it has been carried out studies on the academic graduation, practice, workplace and the social commitment of the category. Despite the diversity of goals and propositions, these studies show that psychologists have been significantly inserted into the social policies field, implying changes in the profession. Since the 1980s, researches in Rio Grande do Norte corroborate the results of national studies. The aim of this paper is to study the insertion and professional career of psychologists in the social policies field in Rio Grande do Norte. In order to accomplish the final results of this paper, it was developed an exploratory research, with the use of a questionnaire, comprised of four parts: general data, academic graduation, complementary graduation and professional experience. The results show three groups of information: characterization, insertion and professional performance. It has been verified expressive insertion of psychologists into the social policies field (41%). The socio-demographic and graduation characteristics are not different from those shown by literature: women, young, from families with an average of 7 to 15 minimum wages. Most of them graduated from public institutions and with post-graduation studies in clinical area. The professionals studied seem to be in worse working conditions compared to the rest of the category, which are also in unfavorable conditions, especially the psychologists who work in social assistance institutions, which present greater problems in its structure. The activities developed do not show anything new, reserving conservative practices instead of effective innovations, emphasizing the discussion on the profession for not considering demands presented to the psychologists in the social policies field. With unique scenario, the eproduction of liberal values corroborates classic performance standards; an unpolitical and uncritical practice is diffused. It is then reconsidered the importance of critical studies that organize goals to the category, with the aim of political transformation concerning the current scenario.

Projeto pedagógico: abordagens e implicações no âmbito da formação em odontologia

Proposals that aim a redirection of current health attention models in Brazil are indispensible due to the need of health issues and its challenges imposed by society. These issues come forth in Higher Education Institutions in an attempt to devise ways to face these demands. The research aims to analyze the Pedagogical Project (PP) present in the Dentistry Graduation Course in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil-(UFRN). This is done in coherence the Brazilian National Curricular Guidelines considering main competences established in the PP. This research was approved by the Ethics Committee at UFRN under document number 285/201. The work is of descriptive nature and was realized with 30 students in the Dentistry Graduation Course. Interviews were realized with the use of problem situation approach. The research was also supported by documental studies that dealt with syllabus present in the disciplines taught at UFRN. Data were processed with the use of the ALCESTE 4.9 software. It is possible to acknowledge that some conservative conceptions arise, even though there is use of active methodologies and innovation that aim to promote reflection and articulation for general competence development such as proposed in the Pedagogical Project in Dentistry Graduation Course at UFRN. These conceptions are mainly present in the teaching-learning process where students do not have full participation. Thus it is possible to conclude that even though there are advances and breakthroughs. This is seen with that fact that there was inclusion of multidisciplinary clinical work as well optional courses in the curriculum. It was also seen that there was occasional use of active teaching methodologies in Dentistry at UFRN. But there is still a need for a didactical and methodological resizing. These actions require the need for progressive development of competences and abilities during the formative process according to what was established in the Brazilian National Curricular Guidelines

A influência do conforto luminoso na satisfação dos profissionais que atuam no ginásio do Centro de Reabilitação Infantil, Natal-RN

This study addresses the environmental quality in therapeutic spaces for children's rehabilitation. The assumption that space is active and interfere in interpersonal relationships, highlights the importance of natural light to the hospital architecture, to foster the creation of environments that encourage and assist in the recovery of patients in the rehabilitation process. Therefore, interferes with health humanization through positive actions in the physiological and emotional effects of natural light, as facilitators of the health recovery process. In Brazil hospital openings systems projects are built exclusively to follow requirements of the local construction code which do not consider the landscape, but only ventilation and heat stroke; and the luminance levels are treated just as recommendations for artificial lighting. The National Policy for Healthcare Humanization presents the environmental comfort as a priority. However, it does not guidelines for achieving it. In this context this research aims to evaluate the lighting comfort in infant therapeutic areas from the professional satisfaction, in order to identify human preferences on the variables: technical and constructive aspects, relationship with the exterior, internal visual interface and quality elements. With this purpose it was adopted as research strategy the Post-Occupancy Evaluation (Technical Functional) through a multi method approach, which included a case study in the rehabilitation gym of Children Rehabilitation Center, at Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, and a reference study at SARAH Rehabilitation Center, Fortaleza Unit at Ceará, both in Brazil northeast. The results indicate that the definition of openings systems should consider external and internal factors to the building, as the natural landscape, the immediate surroundings and activities to be performed. The POE found out the preference of the professional visual privacy in detriment to other analyzed aspects. Thus, it is expected that this study can contribute to the discussion of luminous quality and generate inputs for future projects or renovations in the Children's Rehabilitation Centers, which should not be projected as hospitals

Paradigms that guide the models of attention to the health in Brazil: an analytic essay

SILVA, Flávio César Bezerra da ; COSTA, Francisca Marta de Lima; ANDRADE, Hamilton Leandro Pinto de; FREIRE, Lúcia de Fátima; MACIEL, Patrícia Suerda de Oliveira; ENDERS, Bertha Cruz ; MENEZES, Rejane Maria Paiva de. Paradigms that guide the models of attention to the health in Brazil: an analytic essay. Revista de Enfermagem UFPE On Line., Recife, v.3,n.4, p.460-65. out/dez. 2009. Disponível em < http://www.ufpe.br/revistaenfermagem/index.php/revista/search/results >.

Universalização do acesso à saúde e regulação dos planos privados de assistência à saúde: a atuação regulatória da ANS como instrumento de harmonia contratual e viabilização do papel suplementar da iniciativa privada na efetivação do direito social à saúde

While essential to human nature, health and life have been protected since ancient times by various areas of knowledge, particularly by the Law, given its dynamics within the regulation of social interactions. In Brazil, health has been granted major importance by the Federal Constitution of 1988, which, disrupting the dictatorial authoritarianism, inaugurating a Social State and focusing on the values of freedom and human dignity, raises health to the condition of a social right, marked predominantly by an obligational bias directed, primarily, to the State, through the enforcement of public policies. Although, given the limitation of the State action to the reserve for contingencies, it turns clear that an universalizing access to public health is impossible, seen that the high cost of medical provisions hinders the State to meet all the health needs of the rightholders. As a result of the inefficiency of the State, the effort of the Constituent Assembly of 1988 in creating a hybrid health system becomes nuclear, which, marked by the possibility of exploration of healthcare by the private initiative, assigns to the private enterprise a key role in supplementing the public health system, especially through the offer of health insurance plans. At this point, however, it becomes clear that health provisions rendered by the private agents are not unlimited, which involves discussions about services and procedures that should be excluded from the contractual coverage, for purposes of sectoral balance, situation which draws the indispensability of deliberations between Fundamental Rights on one hand, related to the protection of health and life, and contractual principles on the other hand, connected to the primacy of private autonomy. At this point, the importance of the regulation undertaken by the ANS, Brazilian National Health Agency, appears primordial, which, by means of its seized broad functions, considerable autonomy and technical discretion, has conditions to implement an effective control towards the harmonization of the regulatory triangle, the stability and development of the supplementary health system and, consequently, towards the universalization of the right to health, within constitutional contours. According to this, the present essay, resorting to a broad legislative, doctrinal and jurisprudential study, concludes that economic regulation over the private healthcare sector, when legitimately undertaken, provides progress and stability to the intervening segment and, besides, turns healthcare universalization feasible, in a way that it can not be replaced efficiently by any other State function.

Paradigms that guide the models of attention to the health in Brazil: an analytic essay

SILVA, Flávio César Bezerra da ; COSTA, Francisca Marta de Lima; ANDRADE, Hamilton Leandro Pinto de; FREIRE, Lúcia de Fátima; MACIEL, Patrícia Suerda de Oliveira; ENDERS, Bertha Cruz ; MENEZES, Rejane Maria Paiva de. Paradigms that guide the models of attention to the health in Brazil: an analytic essay. Revista de Enfermagem UFPE On Line., Recife, v.3,n.4, p.460-65. out/dez. 2009. Disponível em < http://www.ufpe.br/revistaenfermagem/index.php/revista/search/results >.

Project Pró-Natal: population-based study of perinatal and infant mortality in Natal, Northeast Brazil

RAMOS, Ana Maria de Oliveira et al. Project Pró-Natal: population-based study of perinatal and infant mortality in Natal, Northeast Brazil. Pediatric and Developmental Pathology, v.3, n.1, p.29-35, 2000

The trajectory of social housing policy in Brazil: From the National Housing Bank to the Ministry of the Cities

This paper discusses social housing policy in Brazil since the 1990s by analyzing government programs’ institutional arrangements, their sources of revenues and the formatting of related financial systems. The conclusion suggests that all these arrangements have not constituted a comprehensive housing policy with the clear aim of serving to enhance housing conditions in the country. Housing ‘policies’ since the 1990s – as proposed by Fernando Collor de Mello, Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and ´ Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s governments (in the latter case, despite much progress towards subsidized investment programs) – have sought to consolidate financial instruments in line with global markets, restructuring the way private interests operate within the system, a necessary however incomplete course of action. Different from rhetoric, this has resulted in failure as the more fundamental social results for the poor have not yet been achieved.

Prevalence of orofacial clefts and social factors in Brazil

RODRIGUES, Katamara et al. Prevalence of orofacial clefts and social factors in Brazil. Brazilian oral research, v.23, n. 1, p. 38-42, 2009.Disponivel em: . Acesso em: 04 out. 2010.