Quality of antenatal care in primary health care in Brazil: a latent class analysis

Abstract Background Adequate antenatal care (ANC) is fundamental in preventing maternal and neonatal mortality. Developing indicators for assessing the ANC quality in Primary Health Care (PHC) is essential. Objective To characterize subgroups of quality of care with respect to ANC at the PHC level in Brazil. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study with data from the first Brazil’s National Program for Improving Primary Care Access and Quality (PMAQ-AB) Cycle (2011–2012). A total of 16 566 PHC teams participated in the first cycle of the PMAQ-AB, corresponding to 49.6% of the teams active across Brazil, distributed across 69.3% of Brazilian municipalities. To assess the quality of ANC, six indicators were defined: ‘Group of medicines,’ ‘Protocols and patient flows,’ ‘Record-keeping practices,’ ‘ANC routine tests,’ ‘Protocols for early detection of pregnant women and ANC provision,’ and ‘Identification and ANC of low/high-risk pregnancies.’ Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was carried out to characterize the quality of care provided by PHC teams according to these six indicators. Results ‘Identification and ANC of low/high-risk pregnancies’ indicator had the highest percentage of teams providing adequate care (39.5%), while ‘ANC routine tests’ had the lowest percentage (16.8%). The LCA identified three classes, and 20.5% of PHC teams had the probability of belonging to the class denominated ‘High adequacy.’ Conclusion Using a national PHC-level dataset, we evaluated PHC teams’ ANC adequacy through six indicators. Brazilian PHC teams consistently show weaknesses across these indicators, particularly in essential care. This approach can guide global initiatives to evaluate the quality of ANC.