The physiotherapy workforce in the Brazilian Unified Health Care System

Maintaining sufficient health care workforce is a global priority to achieve universal health coverage. Therefore this study addresses the availability of physiotherapists in Brazil.

To describe secular trends of the physiotherapy workforce-to-population ratio in the Unified Health System, considering public and private sector and care level (primary, secondary, tertiary) in Brazil and its regions.

Descriptive exploratory quantitative study based on secondary sources. All data related to the distribution of physiotherapists between August 2007 and September 2016 regarding facilities types, location and public and private sectors was obtained from the Brazilian National Registry of Health Care Facilities. Data related to the population of Brazil was extracted from Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The physiotherapy workforce-to-population ratio was calculated by the number of physiotherapists per 1000 population (public and private sector and care level) by ANOVA test. The distribution trends are represented on maps. Annual growth rates were estimated with Prais–Winsten linear regression models, with a significance level of 0.05, autocorrelation was checked by the Durbin–Watson test.

The physiotherapists ratio in Brazil was 0.22/1000 population in 2007 and 0.41 in 2016, showing growth of 86%, with an increasing trend of 0.5% on an annual average. The public sector had the biggest physiotherapy workforce in the country in 2007 and 2016. The primary health care had the smallest physiotherapy workforce-to-population ratio (2007: p > 0.001 and 2016: p = 0.003), even though it had the largest growth trend in annual average (0.9% p > 0.001), followed by public and private tertiary health care sectors (0.8% p > 0.001). The workforce in secondary health care was bigger in the private sector than in the public sector (0.6% p > 0.001 vs. 0.2% p = 0.004). Overall, all regions had greater growth of physiotherapy workforce-to-population ratio in public primary and tertiary health care sectors, and private secondary health care sector, mainly the Southeast, South and Central-West regions.

Although the physiotherapy workforce in Brazil is relatively small, there was a trend towards growth with differences among care levels, and public and private sectors. The physiotherapy workforce-to-population ratio is bigger in the private secondary health care sector, followed by public tertiary, secondary and primary health care sectors. Sub-national regions show similar trends to the national estimates, with minor variations by region.