How GPs can Recognize Persistent Frequent Attenders at Finnish Primary Health Care Using Electronic Patient Records.

Journal of Primary Care & Community Health
Anne SantalahtiPäivi Rautava

Abstract

The proportion of patients who are frequent attenders (FAs) varies from few percent to almost 30% of all patients. A small group of patients continued to visit GPs year after year. In previous studies, it has been reported that over 15% of all 1-year FAs were persistent frequent attenders (pFAs). This study aimed to identify typical features of pFAs from the textual content in their medical entries, which could help GPs to recognize pFAs easily and facilitated treatment.Methods: A retrospective register study was done, using 10 years of electronic patient records. The data were collected from Finnish primary health care centers and used to analyze chronic symptoms and diagnoses of pFAs and to calculate the inverse document frequency weight (IDF) of words used in the patient records. IDF was used to determine which words, if any, are typical for pFAs. The study group consisted of the 5-year pFAs and control group of 1-year FAs. The main background variables were age, gender, occupation, smoking habits, use of alcohol, and BMI. Out of 4392 frequent attenders, 6.6% were pFAs for 3 years and 1.1% were pFAs for 5 years. Of the pFAs, 65% were female and 35% were male. The study group had significantly more depressive episodes (P = .0...Continue Reading

References

Jun 19, 2004·Scandinavian Journal of Public Health·Peter VedstedFrede Olesen
Jul 17, 2004·Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care·Sven-Olof AnderssonMats Nilsson
Jan 30, 2016·BMC Family Practice·Jeanette Therming JørgensenZorana Jovanovic Andersen

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