title: Regional governance: strategies and disputes in health region management.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To analyze the regional governance of the health systemin relation to management strategies and disputes.
  
  
  METHODS
  A qualitative study with health managers from 19 municipalities in the health region of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil. Data were drawn from 17 semi-structured interviews of state, regional, and municipal health policymakers and managers; a focus group; observations of the regional interagency committee; and documents in 2012. The political-institutional and the organizational components were analyzed in the light of dialectical hermeneutics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The regional interagency committee is the chief regional governance strategy/component and functions as a strategic tool for strengthening governance. It brings together a diversity of members responsible for decision making in the healthcare territories, who need to negotiate the allocation of funding and the distribution of facilities for common use in the region. The high turnover of health secretaries, their lack of autonomy from the local executive decisions, inadequate technical training to exercise their function, and the influence of party politics on decision making stand as obstacles to the regional interagency committee's permeability to social demands. Funding is insufficient to enable the fulfillment of the officially integrated agreed-upon program or to boost public supply by the system, requiring that public managers procure services from the private market at values higher than the national health service price schedule (Brazilian Unified Health System Table). The study determined that "facilitators" under contract to health departments accelerated access to specialized (diagnostic, therapeutic and/or surgical) services in other municipalities by direct payment to physicians for procedure costs already covered by the Brazilian Unified Health System.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The characteristics identified a regionalized system with a conflictive pattern of governance and intermediate institutionalism. The regional interagency committee's managerial routine needs to incorporate more democratic devices for connecting with educational institutions, devices that are more permeable to social demands relating to regional policy making.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Campus Anísio Teixeira, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Vitória da Conquista, BA, Brasil.
authors.forename: Adriano Maia dos
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Administração e Planejamento em Saúde, Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sérgio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
authors.forename: Ligia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Giovanella
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006291:Health Policy; D006298:Health Services Administration / Q000191:economics; D006801:Humans; D009111:Local Government; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000458:organization & administration*; D015980:Public Health Practice; D012040:Regional Health Planning