The position of the Family Health Strategy in the health care system under the perspective of the PMAQ-AB participating teams and users

The article analyses the position of the Family Health Strategy teams in the health care network of the Unified Health System in Brazil from the perspective of 16,566 family health teams and 62,505 users who participated in the 2012 Evaluation PMAQ-AB. The results show that Family Health teams act as first contact services and gatekeepers for specialized care. However, there are important organizational barriers to care access, the integration of Primary Health Care (PHC) in health care network is limited, and there is no coordination among PHC and specialized care providers.