Orna EMI, Cardesa GL, Isanta PC

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 45-54
PDF size: 113.48 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The measure of creating in primary healthcare new physician posts with patients from other physicians and with the aim of reducing the volume of patients assigned to each doctor proves a reduction in its effectiveness when the patients returns to their original physician.
Objective: To measure the phenomenon of return with respect to this measure and identify the discriminating variables that influence it and to quantify its contribution.
Methods: Observational analytical study carried out from 2007 to 2012, at San José Centro Health Center, Zaragoza, coinciding with the creation of two new medical posts, and for which patients from the rest of the post were randomly reassigned. After a one-year follow-up, all patients assigned to a newly created post and who returned by free choice to their original physician and at the same time, were registered. The sociodemographic data of the patients were obtained from the computerized registry of the health card. With the collected data, a bivariate analysis and a logistic regression analysis were performed with the SPSS-13 program.
Results: 18.3% (5.3% - 32.7%) of the patients returned to their original physician after a one-year follow-up. The influential characteristics for the return have been: being a woman, morning consultation schedule, Spanish nationality, age over 45, and more than six visits per year. The variable "medical professional at service" is also determined to be influential, and with an effect higher than the other explanatory variables.
Conclusions: The creation of new posts with patients from already existing posts only partially and quantitatively gets to be effective regarding the distribution of patients, due to the return to their posts of origin by a percentage of these patients who also present characteristics associated to a greater frequency.