[Diagnostic activity in general practice. 1. Patients' contact patterns in rural and urban general practices]

Contact with patients was described retrospectively for a period of five years by means of careful notes from the case records in five general practices in urban and rural areas chosen at random as a representative spot test. A total of 968 persons in group 1 of the Danish National Health Insurance (98-99% of the population), 485 men and 483 women or 9.7% of the group 1 insured persons over the age of 30 years had 10,410 consultations. This corresponds to 2.15 consultations per annum for persons in group 1 insurance. 91% of the patients visited the consultation. 17% of all the patient, twice as many women as men, were responsible for 50% of all the consultations. Women had 45% more consultations than men. Women in the age group 35-54 years constituted the group where most persons of the group visited general practice and this group had also the greatest total number of consultations, viz 30% of the total. Significantly more women than men had many consultations in this age group while significantly more men than women had only few consultations in the age group between 35-44 years. Expressed in percentages, the age group 55-64 years showed greatest similarity between men and women. Half of the men and slightly more than one third of all the women consulted their practitioners once per annum or more rarely. Patients of 75 years or over consulted their general practitioners most frequently.