Outcomes of referrals from general practice

Haikio, Jussi-Pekka; Linden, Kimmo; Kvist, M

doi:10.3109/02813439508996777

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Adjusting for listed patients' age, gender, socioeconomic status and access to private practicing specialists and hospitals, we were able to explain up to 45% of the variation in referral rates to private practicing specialists, 26% of the variation in referrals to out patient and 37% of in patient referrals. These results are comparable with those found in other studies, although in the higher end [4,[12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Section: Main Findingssupporting

confidence: 95%

Association between general practice referral rates and patients’ socioeconomic status and access to specialised health care

Sørensen¹,

Olsen

Vedsted

2009

Health Policy

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Section: Main Findingssupporting

confidence: 95%

Association between general practice referral rates and patients’ socioeconomic status and access to specialised health care

Sørensen¹,

Olsen

Vedsted

2009

Health Policy

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“…In the same time period the referral rate in Finland was 4.5% to out- and inpatients services [17], and the British one was 4.7% [10]. In 2009 the referral rate in Denmark was reported to be 8.4% [12].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High referral rates to secondary care by general practitioners in Norway are associated with GPs’ gender and specialist qualifications in family medicine, a study of 4350 consultations

Ringberg

Fleten

Deraas

et al. 2013

BMC Health Serv Res

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BackgroundReferral rates of general practitioners (GPs) are an important determinant of secondary care utilization. The variation in these rates across GPs is considerable, and cannot be explained by patient morbidity alone. The main objective of this study was to assess the GPs’ referral rate to secondary care in Norway, any associations between the referral decision and patient, GP, health care characteristics and who initiated the referring issue in the consultation.MethodsThe probabilities of referral to secondary care and/or radiological examination were examined in 100 consecutive consultations of 44 randomly chosen Norwegian GPs. The GPs recorded whether the issue of referral was introduced, who introduced it and if the patient was referred. Multilevel and naive multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to explore associations between the probability of referral and patient, GP and health care characteristics.ResultsOf the 4350 consultations included, 13.7% (GP range 4.0%-28.0%) of patients were referred to secondary somatic and psychiatric care. Female GPs referred significantly more frequently than male GPs (16.0% versus 12.6%, adjusted odds ratio, AOR, 1.25), specialists in family medicine less frequently than their counterparts (12.5% versus 14.9%, AOR 0.76) and salaried GPs more frequently than private practitioners (16.2% versus 12.1%, AOR 1.36).In 4.2% (GP range 0%-12.9%) of the consultations, patients were referred to radiological examination. Specialists in family medicine, salaried GPs and GPs with a Norwegian medical degree referred significantly more frequently to radiological examination than their counterparts (AOR 1.93, 2.00 and 1.73, respectively).The issue of referral was introduced in 23% of the consultations, and in 70.6% of these cases by the GP. The high referrers introduced the referral issue significantly more frequently and also referred a significantly larger proportion when the issue was introduced.ConclusionsThe main finding of the present study was a high overall referral rate, and a striking range among the GPs. Male GPs and specialists in family medicine referred significantly less frequently to secondary care, but the latter referred more frequently to radiological examination. Our findings indicate that intervention on high referrers is a potential area for quality improvement, and there is a need to explore the referral decision process itself.

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“…There are a few studies that reveal the distribution of referrals between the different specialities in Finland (5)(6)(7)(8), but there is no large, fairly representative picture of referrals in different age groups.…”

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confidence: 99%