Assessment of primary health care features: the professionals' perspective

Objective: To assess primary health care features from the perspective of professionals in a Brazilian municipality with 100% of Family Health Strategy coverage. Methods: Analytical observational study, with a cross-sectional design, involving 83 primary healthcare professionals. It applied the Primary Care Assessment Tool, professional version, which assesses the orientation of primary health care to essential and derivative features in a scale from 0 to 10. Results: The overall score was 7.23, which was considered a perception of high performance. Comparison of groups of professionals with perception of low and high performance showed a difference in the averages obtained for essential features (p=0.042), reinforcing the fragility in first-contact accessibility, which had a low performance (3.70). The score for derivative features showed better performance (8.27), with an emphasis on family centeredness and community orientation. Conclusion: The assessment indicated a positive perception regarding primary health care, with the possibility of improving all features, especially accessibility, to meet the quality objectives of public health policies.