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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The use of primary, secondary, community and social care by families who frequently consult their general practitioner | | Author(s) | Richard D Neal, Gail Wickenden, David Cottrell |
| Journal title | Health & Social Care in the Community, vol 9, no 6, November 2001 |
| Pages | pp 375-382 |
| Keywords | Surgery visits ; Frequent ; Usage [services] ; Social surveys. |
| Annotation | Literature on frequent attendance has focused primarily on high use of specific parts of the health service, particularly general practice. The focus of this study is families rather than individuals, as there is some evidence that individuals who consult more frequently occur disproportionately in certain families and for family reasons. The study was undertaken at one health centre, with 35 individuals from 7 families completing diaries of health service use for 8 weeks. The three aims were: to quantify the number of contacts to primary and secondary health care, and community and social services; to examine temporal patterns of these contacts and patterns of use within families; and to determine the nature of these contacts and how they were valued by patients and health professionals. Collection of data from the health centre demonstrated a major under-reporting of contacts by families on the diary sheets. Indeed, there were far more consultations with all health services than predicted: less than half were with a general practitioner (GP). More work is needed to find reasons for high usage of health service by some individuals. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020109210 A |
| Classmark | L5B: 4HA: QLD: 3F |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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