Construction of collegiate management: the managing experience of a Municipal Health Department through the eyes of an involved political actor

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the potential of participatory management in the municipalities of Health, considering the tensions own health and the need to articulate the interests of users and staff in the daily services. The work also highlights the difficulties of building a constitutional SUS so adverse situation, like that faced by the country since the early 90s. The empirical field was the management of the municipal health system of Amparo, 2001 to 2006, emphasizing the analysis of the construction of collective spaces, from the documentary analysis, and the statements of managers and employees are made in focus groups . Starting from the position of managing and using empirical data were reported and analyzed the main challenges to build a model of attention with its central structuring primary care and a management model based on collective spaces. The analysis indicates the ability to produce changes in local health systems from the commitment to building management, shared spaces, particularly the shift of power by actors who have more prominent in the biomedical model still hegemonic. Among the challenges for these changes is the ability to deal with the conflict present in the collective spaces, recognizing that lack of management tools to deal with them, either in teams, whether in the teams. Another challenge is the sheer complexity of the health scene, which creates uncertainty regarding the outcome of this work, because in the daily services, the healthcare bill is always under construction. The study concludes that managers need the ability to invest in tension towards the construction of new modes of production of life at the collective level, investing in projects built on equality and democratic coexistence.