[Is it necessary that some patients come to see us so often? Factors associated with primary care use in pediatrics]. / Es necesario que algunos pacientes nos visiten tan a menudo?: factores asociados con la utilización en pediatría de atención primaria.

OBJECTIVES: To analyze the relationship between pediatric patients morbidity and their level of primary health care services use; and to establish if the patients level of use affects the health promotion and immunization schedule completion. METHODS: All patients assigned to a pediatric practice of the Basque National Health Service in Astrabudua (Bizkaia, Spain) over a 6-year period were categorized into different utilization patterns according to their age and number of primary care visits (whose principal reason for encounter was different from health promotion activities). Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed comparing three groups of subjects: 116 consistently high users, 115 consistently low users and 123 patients classified as consistently medium or erratic users. Ambulatory care Groups (ACGs) case-mix system was used to manage pathologies. RESULTS: High use patients experienced several morbidity types most frequently than low use ones: asthma (OR = 44.7; 95% CI = 5.5-206.1), diseases likely to recurr (OR = 33.5; 95% CI = 8.5-131.6), specialty unstable chronic conditions (OR = 10.8; 95% CI = 2.2-52.8), psychosocial conditions (OR = 5.7; 95% CI = 2.1-15.2), chronic medical stable conditions (OR = 4.0; 95% CI = 1.9-8.6), eye/dental diseases (OR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.5-8.1). On the other hand, low users were more likely to be lacking completion of the immunization (OR = 3.0; 95% CI = 1.1-8.8) and the well-child care program visits schedules (OR = 4.3; 95% CI = 2.3-8.0). CONCLUSION: Our data confirm that high utilization, far from being inadequate behavior, is an adequate response to the higher health care needs showed by such patients. Primary care pediatricians should assess preventive care needs of the children who consult them infrequently.

[Prevalence and costs of chronicity and multimorbidity in the population covered by the Basque public telecare service]. / Prevalencia de cronicidad y multimorbilidad en la población cubierta por el servicio público de teleasistencia de Euskadi: impacto en costes y calidad.

BACKGROUND: The public telecare service in the Basque Autonomous Community (betiON) is a service offered by the Department of Employment and Social Policy of the Basque Government and offers telephone support to elderly and disabled populations, providing communication with an assistance centre. This connection with health care devices makes it possible to implement shared information systems with health and social data, which enable a characterization of the population attended to and the development of integrated models for health and social provision. OBJECTIVE: To describe the distribution of chronic diseases and multimorbidity among users of betiON, to estimate the cost of their health care and to compare these indicators with those of the general population. METHODS: We extracted information from betiON and public healthcare databases. We characterized the telecare population above 65 years (N = 23.742) and compared it with the total population in the Basque Autonomous Community (N = 2.262.707) with respect to variables in demography socio-economic burden, costs and ambulatory care conditions. RESULTS: In the telecare population, the average age is 83 years, 80% are women, 55.1% live alone and reside in poorer neighbourhoods. Forty-two point five per cent of males and 36.5% of women are affected by five or more chronic conditions, averaging 4.06 pathologies per person. They also show higher healthcare costs than the general population. CONCLUSIONS: Telecare users have a higher disease burden, greater need for healthcare and unfavourable social conditions. Telecare provides an opportunity for innovation and intervention, through the coordination of social and healthcare services.

Application of the ambulatory care groups in the primary care of a European national health care system: does it work?

BACKGROUND: Ambulatory Care Groups (ACGs), a US case-mix system that uses the patient as the unit of analysis, is particularly appropriate for health care systems in which physicians serve a defined list of patients. OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent to which the categorization of patients according to ACGs would account for the utilization of primary care services in a national health care system within the European Union. METHODS: Of all subjects continuously assigned to 9 physicians from public primary health care centers in Bizkaia, Basque Country (Spain) over a 12-month period, those visited at least once (n = 9,093) were included. According to the subject's age, sex, and ICD-9-CM diagnoses assigned during a year of patient-provider encounters, patients were classified by means of the ACGs system. RESULTS: Multiple linear regression analyses indicated that age and sex did not explain more than 7.1% of the variance in annual visits made by adults and 25.7% by children to primary care physicians. However, the r2 adjusted to the ACGs model was 50% and 48%, respectively, and even higher, that is 58% and 64% for another component of the system, the Ambulatory Diagnostic Groups (ADGs). CONCLUSIONS: Those results support the inadequacy of using the patient's age and sex alone to estimate physicians' workload in the primary health setting and the need to consider morbidity categories. The ACGs case-mix system is a useful tool for incorporating patients' morbidity in the explanation of the use of primary health care services in a European national health system.