Out of hours care: a profile analysis of patients attending the emergency department and the general practitioner on call

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Walter Buylaert¹  Peter De Paepe¹  Roy Remmen²  Paul Van Royen²  Hilde Philips² 

[1] Department of Emergency Medicine, Ghent University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, B-9000, Ghent, Belgium;Department of Primary and Interdisciplinary Care of the University of Antwerp, Belgium (PICA-UA), General Practice, Universiteitsplein 1, Geb R, 3de verd, B-2610, Wilrijk, Belgium;

关键词: Emergency Department;    General Practitioner;    Choice Behaviour;    Medical Insurance;    Binary Logistic Regression Analysis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-11-88

 received in 2010-05-26, accepted in 2010-11-15,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundOveruse of emergency departments (ED) is of concern in Western society and it is often referred to as 'inappropriate' use. This phenomenon may compromise efficient use of health care personnel, infrastructure and financial resources of the ED. To redirect patients, an extensive knowledge of the experiences and attitudes of patients and their choice behaviour is necessary. The aim of this study is to quantify the patients and socio-economical determinants for choosing the general practitioner (GP) on call or the ED.MethodsData collection was conducted simultaneously in 4 large cities in Belgium. All patients who visited EDs or used the services of the GP on call during two weekends in January 2005 were enrolled in the study in a prospective manner. We used semi-structured questionnaires to interview patients from both services.Results1611 patient contacts were suitable for further analysis. 640 patients visited the GP and 971 went to the ED. Determinants that associated with the choice of the ED are: being male, having visited the ED during the past 12 months at least once, speaking another language than Dutch or French, being of African (sub-Saharan as well as North African) nationality and no medical insurance. We also found that young men are more likely to seek help at the ED for minor trauma, compared to women.ConclusionsPatients tend to seek help at the service they are acquainted with. Two populations that distinctively seek help at the ED for minor medical problems are people of foreign origin and men suffering minor trauma. Aiming at a redirection of patients, special attention should go to these patients. Informing them about the health services' specific tasks and the needlessness of technical examinations for minor trauma, might be a useful intervention.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Philips et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.