Cardiovascular rehabilitation, barriers, coverage of health services, participation, referral and consultation.
Background: Brazil is a country of continental dimensions marked by peculiarities in the health system and regional inequities in the financing of services. Despite strong national and international recommendations for cardiovascular rehabilitation (CVR), the availability of programs is uneven and the barriers to participation are known in an incipient way in the Brazilian scenario. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate these barriers in different regions, health services and treatment stages. Aims: describe and compare barriers to participation in RCV in public and private health services. Methods: it’s an observational-analytical cross-sectional study conducted according to Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) between May and December 2017. In this study, CVR participants and eligible inpatient and outpatient were matched by type of service they used. The level of barriers to CVR was evaluated by the Barrier Scale for Cardiac Rehabilitation (CRBS) and U Mann-Withney and Kruskal Wallis tests were used in the comparisons between service types and treatment stages, respectively. Results: a total of 140 patients participated in the study. The mean total barrier score was 1.98 ± 0.48 and differed only between inpatients and CVR participants (p <0.05). Some barriers in access and perceived needs domains were higher in public than in private services (p <0.05). The domain perceived needs had the highest score of the sample (2.31 ± 0.71). Not knowing about CVR (3.75 ± 1.66) and lack of medical referral (2.32 ± 1.53) were the major barriers in this domain. Conclusion: there were no differences in the overall scores between public and private services, as well as between inpatients and outpatients. However, some barriers differed significantly between these groups. Therefore, approaches for dissemination of knowledge in RCV and implementation of strategies for reference of eligible should be encouraged in both services.