Primary health care: an analysis of the technical efficiency of resources in the state of Minas Gerais

The objective of the research was to analyze the performance of primary health care from the perspective of the effectiveness of public policies geared to the sector. For this purpose this study adopted the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a way to generate a technical efficiency indicator for primary care, and use multiple regression analysis to determine which factors are capable of conditioning efficiency. Among the main findings highlight the inefficiency of primary care in most of the 781 municipalities analyzed, as well as the finding that controllable factors such as illiteracy interfere negatively in efficiency and should be the focus of intersectoral public policies and municipal managers.