Action on waiting list for Speech Therapy in the Unified Health System (SUS) in a medium-sized Brazilian municipality.
Thamires Maria de Araújo Salles, Mayara Gabriela Pereira Dos Santos, Rafaella de Góes Moraes and 2 others
Of 246 people on a waiting list for speech-language-hearing care, 147 no longer needed help and 162 were scheduled.
The list was dominated by boys under 12 with language complaints.
Key findings
1147 of the 393 who agreed to participate no longer needed care: 106 had already received help or their complaint resolved on its own, and 41 had moved.
2Of the 246 whose situations were addressed, 162 were scheduled for an appointment and 84 continued to wait.
3The dominant complaint was child language (182 of 217 single-area referrals). The group was predominantly male (158) and children (177).
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Single municipality in inland São Paulo; findings cannot be generalised to other regions or health systems. The waiting list contained incomplete and outdated information, and only telephone contact was permitted, so people without a working phone number were excluded. Convenience sample: the university learned about the list by asking the municipal health department. Conducted by undergraduate students as a senior project, supervised by professors. Descriptive statistics only; no inferential analysis was performed.
Declared interests
No funding declared. No conflicts of interest declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the removal of 147 people from the list as evidence that waiting resolves complaints. Of the 106 who no longer needed care, 70 had their needs met naturally and 36 had already received help at another facility. The list shrank because people recovered on their own or had already been seen, not because of any intervention delivered by this study.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →