Reasons for encounter by different levels of urgency in out-of-hours emergency primary health care in Norway: a cross sectional study

Autor: Steinar Hunskaar, Guttorm Raknes
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Adult
Male
medicine.medical_specialty
Abdominal pain
Fever
Cross-sectional study
lcsh:Special situations and conditions
International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC)
Staffing
Needs and demand
Norwegian
Chest pain
After-hours care
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Health care
medicine
Emergency medical services
Humans
030212 general & internal medicine
Primary Health Care
Norway
business.industry
lcsh:RC952-1245
030503 health policy & services
lcsh:Medical emergencies. Critical care. Intensive care. First aid
lcsh:RC86-88.9
Classification
medicine.disease
Health services
language.human_language
Abdominal Pain
Cross-Sectional Studies
Reason for encounter
Family medicine
Emergency Medicine
language
Wounds and Injuries
International Classification of Primary Care
Female
Medical emergency
Emergencies
medicine.symptom
0305 other medical science
business
Research Article
Zdroj: BMC Emergency Medicine, Vol 17, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2017)
BMC Emergency Medicine
ISSN: 1471-227X
DOI: 10.1186/s12873-017-0129-2
Popis: Background Frequencies of reasons for encounter (RFEs) in emergency primary care out-of-hours (OOH) services are relevant for planning of capacities as well as to target the training of staff at casualty clinics. We aimed to present frequencies of RFEs in the different organ systems, and to identify the most frequent RFEs at different urgency levels. Methods We analyzed data on RFEs in Norwegian OOH services. International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-2) RFE codes were recorded in all contacts to eight representative OOH casualty clinics in 2014 and 2015 covering 20 municipalities with a total population of 260 196. Frequencies of each ICPC-2 chapters and groups of ICPC-2 codes were calculated at different urgency levels. Results Musculoskeletal, respiratory, skin, digestive and general and unspecified issues were the most frequent RFE groups. Fever was the most frequent single ICPC-2 RFE code, but was less common among the most urgent cases. Abdominal pain was the most common RFE in patients with yellow urgency level (urgent), and chest pain dominated the potentially red (potentially life threatening) cases. There was less variation in the use of ICPC-2 with increasing urgency level. Conclusions This study identifies important differences in RFEs between urgency levels in the Norwegian OOH services. The findings provide new insight into the function of the primary health care emergency services in the Norwegian health care system, and should have implications for staffing, training and equipment in the OOH services. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12873-017-0129-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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