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Related Experiment Videos

Frequent attenders' consulting patterns with general practitioners.

R D Neal1, P L Heywood, S Morley

  • 1Centre for Research in Primary Care, Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds. r.d.neal@leeds.ac.uk

The British Journal of General Practice : the Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
|February 28, 2001
PubMed
Summary

Frequent attenders in healthcare consult with many doctors, showing greater continuity of care than infrequent attenders. Understanding these consulting patterns is key to developing interventions for frequent attendance.

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Area of Science:

  • General Practice
  • Health Services Research

Background:

  • Frequent attendance in primary care is a recognized phenomenon, yet patterns of doctor consultation among these patients remain under-researched.
  • Understanding patient consulting behavior is crucial for developing targeted interventions and improving care for frequent attenders.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if frequent attenders consult more with specific doctors.
  • To quantify the number of different doctors consulted by frequent attenders.
  • To compare the continuity of care between frequent and non-frequent attenders.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of a large dataset (592,028 consultations, 61,055 patients) from four general practices over 41 months.
  • Frequent attenders were defined as the top 3% of consulting patients per practice.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Consulting patterns of frequent attenders were compared with non-frequent attenders and the overall patient population.

    • Main Results:

    • Significant variation exists in the number and proportion of consultations frequent attenders have with individual doctors.
    • The majority of frequent attenders consulted with most or all doctors within their practice.
    • Frequent attenders demonstrated higher continuity of care compared to non-frequent attenders.

    Conclusions:

    • The reasons for differential doctor consultation by frequent attenders are unclear, with possibilities including active encouragement by some doctors.
    • While some frequent attenders show loyalty to a single doctor, many consult widely.
    • Further research is needed to understand the implications of these consulting behaviors and to inform interventions for problematic frequent attendance.