Home care in primary health care: an operational synthesis

Abstract

The institutionalization of the diseased subject has privileged the scientific medical model and has subordinated family autonomy in the caring of a person with health needs to hospital and to medical knowledge. However, this model has been shown to be inefficient to meet the health demands resulting from demographic and epidemiological transition by which society have been going through. In this context, home care emerges as an alternative to hospital care, making possible the resumption of home as a space for care production, based on principles of humanization and expanded clinic, avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations and making possible a most appropriate use of available resources. This narrative review of literature approaches home care in the context of primary health care. It contemplates its definitions, principles, objectives, organizational aspects, eligibility of subjects to home care, family risk classification, the role of each family health team member, the construction of care technologies, and the development of an efficient data recording system.