Specialized Component of Pharmaceutical Service (SCPS) is a strategy to access high cost medicines in the National Health System (NHS) of Brazil, ensuring the completeness of medical treatment in which lines of care are defined in the Clinical Protocols and Therapeutic Guidelines (CPTG). To access the SCPS, the physician has to give to the patient a filled form, following some requirements and the CPTGs. In order to improve rational prescription and to facilitate patients’ access to medicines, we visited physicians and presented key information regarding the CPTGs of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and the SCPS medicines request process; then, we sought to know their perceptions.

From August to September 2017, 43 specialists and general practitioners that prescribed medicines of SCPS in Minas Gerais were visited by researchers about the CPTG of RA and how to prescribe to provide easier access to these medicines to their patients. After the visits, a researcher contacted the physicians by phone to evaluate their satisfaction with the visits and about the program through a brief questionnaire.

Twenty-eight physicians answered to our phone call, providing a response to the questionnaire. Sixty-eight percent indicated they were very satisfied with the visit. Fifty percent stated that the content of the visit was relevant to their practice, and 60.7 percent said that the distributed material was going to be useful for their professional practice. Regarding the guidelines, 43 percent affirmed that the visit really helped them to improve their understanding of medicine requests in the NHS and 42.9 percent said that the visit increased their understanding of which patients are eligible for RA treatment in the SCPS; 57.1 percent of those affirmed that the visits increased their knowledge.

The physicians, who were mostly specialists, already had knowledge about CPTG and prescription practices of SCPS’s medicines, nevertheless, they showed interest in the visits to review and improve their knowledge and clinical practice.