Primary care physicians tried to resolve less than two-thirds of the questions asked, and mainly did so through readily available printed material. Better methods are needed to provide answers to questions that arise in clinical practice.

Restrictions: Hawthorne effect or bias in the person observed and participants stage fright. Applicability: the results of the research will be used to plan the resources needed for doctors to enjoy and put into practice the best scientific knowledge.

In this study, 67% of prescriptions for hypolipidaemic medicines were ordered inadequately in the pensioner population, which represents a considerable pharmacological expenditure. This percentage and the mean cost per inadequate prescription was higher if a specialist was the professional initiating the treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to run pharmaceutical prescription quality programmes with both primary care physicians and specialists involved.

Hospital readmissions have been associated to patient medical condition and to factors related to the health care received. Integrating information from hospital and primary care administrative data bases improves the capacity to identify factors associated with a higher readmission risk.

No abstract