Table 6 Examples of the category “Administrative coordination mechanisms”

Patient referral centres

“There are a lot of delays in referrals, because they call another city, they call the provider, because they serve as the intermediary between the two parts, and this takes a long time” (Administrative professional secondary care, Network 4-C Colombia).

“it’s the story of the UTI [Intensive Care Unit], it takes 2,3,4 days to get a bed, if he [the patient] survives or gets better, good, if not….. So the problem is really very grave in this sense” (Provider manager, Network 2 Brazil)

“our information system has this fault, it doesn’t allow us to confirm the scheduling of the patient’s appointment, much less whether the appointment actually took place. So while all this is going on,(…) the professional ends up with various gaps in their appointments schedule (…) when I have a huge demand from patients waiting to be seen who could have been rescheduled to fill the gaps…”. (Provider manager, Network 3 Brazil)

“I know that this strategy of jumping the queue happens, because I’ve seen it in other services and it’s the same thing. But if we were to carefully analyze this practice, we would see that it is unjust, because if I don’t know anyone who can help me get my patient seen, then he’s going to have to wait in line, isn’t he.” (Primary care professional, Network 2 Brazil)