Retrospective Evaluation of Family Medicine Outpatient Clinic Profile at a Tertiary Hospital in İzmir

Abstract

Objective: Primary Health Care is defined as, the health institutions and the produced services where diagnostic procedures and treatment of 95% of admitted patients are performed, besides referring patients to secondary and tertiary hospitals in certain circumstances and serving preventive health care. In this study we assess two-month patient profiles and develop recommendations based on the data obtained from our outpatient clinics in a tertiary hospital.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study in which 1708 patients whom were referred to a tertiary hospital family medicine outpatient clinic in Izmir between 1.11.2015 and 31.12.2015 were evaluated retrospectively. Age, gender, smoking behavior, admission requests, diagnoses, consultation, laboratory tests and prescription data of patients were obtained. Results:The mean age of patients enrolled in the study was 47.11±16.70 years and 545 (68.2%) patients were women. The average of application per patient was 1.5±1.2 to a family medicine outpatient clinic in a tertiary hospital. The most common admission was the demand for physical examination with 500 patients (62.6%). The most common complaints in the physical examination group were stomach related complaints (15%), abdominal pain (12.4%) and body pain (11.0%). Among the 500 patients, 398 (79.6%) were investigated by laboratory tests, 289 (57.8%) were prescribed, and 108 (21.6%) were referred to other clinics. The rheumatology clinic was the most commonly referred to with 22.2% (n:24) of patients. Conclusion:It is important to give an appropriate education during resident training and encourage continuing medical education about monitoring and management of chronic diseases, vaccines, child and pregnancy surveillance issues and other commonly observed complaints in order to provide quality primary care services.

İstanbul’da Bir Aile Hekimliği Polikliniğine Bir Yıl İçinde Başvuran Hasta Sayısı, Konulan Tanılar ve Hasta Profillerinin Değerlendirilmesi

“…When the procedures performed in this study were examined, it was observed that 0.5% (n = 28) of the patients were given drug reports. Compared with the study conducted by Küçükerdem et al 19 in a family medicine outpatient clinic in a tertiary health care facility, the percentage of drug reporting (3.2%) was found to be higher and the percentage of prescribing was lower. The reason for this is that the patients do the procedures such as the drug report in the outpa-tient clinics of the 2nd and 3rd level health institutions and apply to the primary care family medicine for more examinations and printing of drugs.…”

“…In our study, it was observed that chronic diseases above 45 years of age increased and muscle and joint pain frequency increased over 65 years of age. In a study conducted by Küçükerdem et al 19 in 799 patients in İzmir, myalgia was found to be more frequent in patients over 65 years of age. In contrast, gastric complaints such as gastro-esophageal reflux disease were present in patients aged 19-45 years.…”

“…[16][17][18] When the average age of the patients was examined according to the gender in the studies, the mean age of the women was found to be higher than that of the men and a similar result was obtained in this study (p <0.01). 16,17,[19][20][21] The reason for this is that I think that the older women have more chronic diseases than men and that they apply to the primary health care facilities for chronic disease follow-up and reported medication printing and laboratory tests. When the procedures performed in this study were examined, it was observed that 0.5% (n = 28) of the patients were given drug reports.…”

Diagnostic costs: a research in a family medicine outpatient clinic

“…Thus, a decrease in number of visits was observed in our outpatient clinic for patients over 65 years old. Moreover, our finding was consistent with the results of Kucukerdem, Arslan, Koc, and Can (2017). According to their study, the most frequent visits to family medicine outpatient clinic in Izmir was in the 46-64 years of age group with 319 patients (Kucukerdem et al, 2017).…”