Access to Specialized Consultations: Case of the City of Pelotas/Rs

Access to specialized consultation provided by the Unified Health System (SUS) in the city of Pelotas/RS depends on visiting the Basic Health Unit (UBS), which works as a triage to define whether there is a need and the level of priority of this service.secondary.Based on this, this study aims to identify the referencing process and possible failures that could overload this system, carried out through exploratory research.The existence of a regulation center was evidenced, which is computerized by the AGHOS system, which has a regulatory doctor responsible for assessing whether the patient, in fact, needs to be referred to a specialist and whether this has priority on the waiting list among the other people.It was found that in some stages of this process mistakes may occur that negatively impact the patient's prognosis, such as longer waiting times, undue return to the queue, and also the system itself, which may become overloaded.Therefore, standardization of this process is necessary, such as the presence of pre-established criteria for pathologies that have higher priority, in order to increase the efficiency of this system and reduce any unnecessary expenses.