Objective:

To evaluate the metric properties of the instruments that value the functions of primary health care from the perspective of the users.

Materials and methods:

Systematic review. The “primary health care” descriptors, “questionnaires”, “psychometrics”, “outcome measurement”, and “process measurement” were used. The inclusion criteria were publications of scientific journals in Spanish, English and Portuguese, validation studies of questionnaires that evaluated functions of primary health care. The metric properties of the instruments were assessed using the EMPRO (by its acronym in English: Evaluating Measures of Patient Reported Outcomes) questionnaire.

Results:

A total of 28 descriptors that met the inclusion criteria were identified. Eleven questionnaires were suitable for application, and of these, eight came from the PCAT (by its acronym in English: Primary Care Assessment Tool), since they gathered more evidence on the quality of their metric properties.

Conclusions:

There are questionnaires to evaluate the essential functions of primary health care. The metric properties of the PCAT were adequate in most of the adapted and validated versions thus allowing reliable results.

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