Introduction:

When designing health organizations, one of the primary characteristics of the services must be considered: their perishable nature. It means that they do not allow inventories, making it necessary to meet the demand of patients as requested. Therefore, the study of the capacity of the service constitutes an important component in their planning.

Objective:

to evaluate the capacity of urgent-emergency services in the Primary Health Care with simulation support.

Methods:

the evaluative research came true in the urgency-emergency process belonging to the University Polyclinic Carlos Verdugo, of the province of Matanzas. The main tools and techniques used were observation and auto-observation, documents review, individual interview, presentation cards and diagrams of process, forecasts and the cost-reducing mathematical simulation.

Results:

there is a capacity that surpasses the request in a week, except in the morning, in the studied service. It was considered that in any week, Sunday is the day with a lower number of patients, whereas Monday is the one with a higher number.

Conclusions:

the used method showed that the study of capacity is an important component in planning Primary Health Care services, which is why managers should succeed in establish strategies that allow them to make a proper use of the system´s capacity and at the same time offering a personalized attention, without excessive waits; the latest being deeply affecting patient’s satisfaction.

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