[Elaboration of an index to evaluate the access of elderly people to primary health care services].

Abstract

The scope of this study was to develop an index to assess the access of the elderly population to primary health care services. To this end, 25 indicators with potential for composing the index were selected, adapted for the elderly population and validated by 15 specialists. To verify agreement between the judges, the concordance rate and the calculation of the content validity coefficient for the topics of clarity, relevance, and pertinence were used. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was performed to analyze the reliability of the internal consistency of the data. the indicators were adapted to a percentage scale and distributed into two sub-indices and, in the end, the most appropriate procedure for building the index was described. The concordance rate of the topics revealed averages above 80. Cronbach's alpha showed good internal consistency, with values above 0.6 and the overall content validity coefficient was 0.932. The elderly access to primary health care index is an index that varies from 0 to 1, and the closer it is to 1, the better the access for the elderly. The results suggest that the index is relevant and appropriate for measuring the equity of access of elderly people to primary health care services.