Regulation of access to the hospital care network for children in Ceará, Brazil

Regulation is a state management tool to ensure that networked health services and goods comply with the principles of universality of access and integrality of care in the Unified Health System. To describe the regulatory actions of access to children's health services in the hospital setting, a descriptive, documentary study was performed to address data on the regulation of access to hospital health‐care points for children from January to October 2015. The sample consisted of 2485 hospitalization procedures and regulated transfers in children between 0 and 15 years old living in the Juazeiro do Norte Health Region in the State of Ceará. The children's health‐care network in the referenced region includes 8 hospitals that together provide care for 105 163 children in the surgical, emergency, and intensive care areas. These hospitals have a total of 176 beds, of which 118 are pediatric clinics, 7 are surgical pediatric units, and 51 are neonatal and intensive care units. In the medical clinics, 2279 children were hospitalized for local admissions, and 206 (8.9%) were transferred to intensive care units. Most children were under 1 year old (43.6%). The regulation of access to the hospitals' health‐care network seems to guarantee local and regional access to 6 municipalities in the region. However, a high waiting time for intensive care beds was observed.