Introduction:

At the beginning of 2015, the public-private complementarity agreement was implemented between the two main providers of the Department of San José Uruguay: AMSJ and ASSE San José, thus forming the Departmental Unit of Palliative Medicine of San José (UDMP). The main objective of the agreement is to ensure palliative care to all users of the providers involved, with the fundamental principles of quality, equity and accessibility, following the guidelines of the National Palliative Care Plan of the Ministry of Public Health of Uruguay. The objective is describe and analyze the experience of implementing the country's first public-private complementation model in Palliative Care (PC).

Methodology:

Descriptive, analytical, retrospective study that includes data from the first seven years of operation of the agreement.

Results:

The public-private complementation agreement in the Department of San José allowed the creation of an interdisciplinary team that continuously assisted 1,422 patients from urban and rural areas, with various pathologies. Departmental CP coverage increased significantly, from 24% in 2014 to 57% in 2021. These results were achieved by implementing a palliative care model that ensures continuity of care in hospitalization, office and home, which allowed the patient's autonomy to be respected, achieving the death of 67% of patients at home. The satisfaction of users and family members with the assistance provided was evaluated as very good.

Conclusions:

The complementation agreement turned out to be an efficient tool to promote access to CP, avoiding the overlap of teams in home care throughout the department of San José.

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