Performance of health consortia in the Brazilian public health system: Arrangements, roles and challenges

Abstract

With the objective of analyzing the arrangements, roles developed and challenges of performance of health consortia in the Brazilian health system, an integrative review was carried out, from August to October 2022, in three databases, through the crossing of the main descriptor: Consortia of Health with secondary descriptors: Regionalization; Health Management; Secondary Health Care; Health Policy and Health Comprehensiveness, plus the Boolean operator ‘and’. A total of 656 articles were found. After reading the titles and abstracts, 621 were excluded. After reading the full text, five others were excluded, resulting in 30 articles. The first publications are from the end of the 1990s, from horizontal consortia between municipal entities, recently created in the South and Southeast regions. As of 2016, articles are published on vertical consortia, between state and municipal entities, and horizontal consortia between state entities, both in the Northeast region. The consortia were created to expand the offer of specialized services and promote impact on the population’s access to different services and cooperation between federal entities. However, the lack of integration between the points of the care network, the commodification of health, the lack of regulation and social control remain as challenges.