[Morbidity in primary care clinics of 29 kibbutzim--prospective study]

All consultations and diagnoses in the clinics of 29 kibbutzim during the 12-month period, March 1981-February 1982, were analyzed. In these clinics there is physician-nurse teamwork and the nurse handles independently certain types of consultations which in the regular Kupat Holim clinic would ordinarily be handled by a physician. The total study population was 15,605, and there were 62,950 consultations during the observation period, giving an average annual rate of 4.03 per person. More than 40% of the consultations were with nurses. The distribution of diseases by the 18 main diagnostic groups of the International Classification of Diseases was compared with that in 3 earlier primary care surveys in Israel and that in the large general practice survey in Britain for the years 1981 and 1982. There were no marked differences between the morbidity patterns of this survey and those of the others. The morbidity patterns were typical for those found nowadays at the primary care level in developed countries. With greater life expectancy in industrialized societies, chronic-degenerative diseases and particularly cardiovascular diseases, have increased. This is reflected in more frequent visits to primary care clinics. The proportion of these visits is slightly lower in this survey than in the others due to the younger age profile of the kibbutz population.