Objective: To identify the defining characteristics of Primary (PC) and Specialist Care (SC), along with the level of concordance between managers in both sectors in the definition of these characteristics.
Setting: Intermediate course in Administration of the Andalucian School of Public Health, Granada.
Design: By means of the Philips 66 technique, followed by consensus construction, the enumeration of the characteristics of care sectors was requested of the managers, who had been previously selected for an Administration course. The procedure was repeated on five different occasions between 1991 and 1993. For each technique four groups were created (two formed by PC and two by SC professionals), in order to obtain self-referred (PC professionals assess PC and the SC ones, SC) and crossed assessments (PC professionals assess SC and vice versa).
Participants: 116 professionals in all took part, 55 from the PC sphere, 45 SC and 16 in provincial and/or central services.
Results: There was dissonance in the expectations that managers placed in each sector of the health care system. PC managers' views of SC and SC managers' of PC did not coincide with the views of each group of managers on their own health care sector.
Conclusions: When designing activities to coordinate between sectors, a period of clarification, both on the characteristics of each sector and on the expectations placed on each one, should be included. The subsequent negotiation of these can assist the development and maintenance of joint activities to improve coordination.