Utilización de servicios de atención de inconformidades de la Comisión Nacional de Arbitraje Médico Use of Services provided by the National Commission of Medical Arbitration

Introduction. As part of the transformation of the Mexican National Health System, the National Commission of Medical Arbitration (CONAMED) was established in 1996 to help improve the quality of health services. The Commission provides, among other services, guidance to users. In the last three years, from the total number of cases treated in CONAMED, the number of guidance services has decreased from 61.4% in 2007 to 38.2% in 2010. This encouraged the conduction of a study to determine whether there is correlation between the increment in visits to CONAMED’s institutional website and the decrease in use of guidance services. Material and Methods. Comparative and correlational descriptive study to analyze the behavior of guidance services and visits to CONAMED’s institutional website via the Internet. A database with information from November 2007 until October 2010 was developed. The analysis was carried out in the following four stages: 1) Variable characterization, 2) First factorial analysis, 3) Multiple regression model generation, 4) Model evaluation. From stage two, the statistical program SPSS was used. “Guidance services provided” was determined as the dependent variable and the following sections from the website were treated as independent variables: “About”, “Procedures and Services”, “Health professionals”, “Ministry of Public Service,” “Publications” and “Other Sites of Interest”. The latter were analyzed using multivariate techniques in order to see its significance and to group them according to the variances. Using a multiple regression model, the variables that inversely affect the behavior of guidance services were identified. Results. Guidance services provided by CONAMED in 2010 showed a decrease of 18.6% and 63.9% in comparison to those provided in 2009 and 2006 respectively. Visits to CONAMED’s website were divided into two components, explaining 87.6% of the total variance. The two groups account for more than 50% of the variance in “guidance services” and the component that groups the variables “Procedures and Services”, “About” and “Publications” inversely explain these issues. The model generated by these variables explained 62.1% of the guidance services behavior. Conclusions. The decrease in the number of guidance services provided directly to users by CONAMED is statistically proportional to the increase in visits to sections: “About”, “Procedures and Services” and “Publications” on the website, where the first two contain information similar to that provided through guidance services.