Continuity of care
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007There has been plenty of assertion / anecdotal evidence to suggest that continuity of care matters. Now there is more hard evidence to show that there is a benefit to patients seeing their own GP instead of walk-in centres & A&E departments. This is in addition to plenty of US research which shows the same.
After adjusting for measures of medical need, demographic characteristics and other covariates, we found that increased emergency department use by elderly patients was associated with lack of a primary physician, lower continuity of care with the primary physician, low overall use of primary care services and residence in a region with more general practitioners per 1000 population. Furthermore, lower continuity of care and low overall use of primary care services appeared to have a stronger effect on emergency department use among urban than among rural residents, whereas absence of a primary physician had a stronger effect among rural residents.
A much bigger & more robust study then than the British one.
Something to consider when commissioning services perhaps?
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