[The demand for medical consultations in primary health care in Navarre]

To find the utilization of the health center medical services in Navarra and how it relates to characteristics of both doctors and population.

Descriptive study.

Primary Health Care.

167 family doctors (GP) from 31 PCTs. The daily on-demand, administrative and pre-programmed consultation in the records of the PCTs from 1/5/90 to 30/3/91 were analysed for each doctor.

Indicators: frequentation (interviews/inhabitant/year), pressure of attendance (interviews/doctor/day), programmed pressure (pre-programmed interviews/doctor/day) and administrative pressure (administrative interviews/doctor/day). Average frequency in Navarra is 5.26 (SD = 2.58); average pressure of attendance, 32.13 (SD = 11.88); average pre-programmed pressure, 2.68 (SD = 1.81) and average administrative pressure, 7.9 (SD = 7.11). Frequency is inversely determined by the size of the allotted population list (p < 0.01). On studying doctors with an allotted list of _ 1,500 people, GPs with residential training have lower frequency of interviews than the rest (p < 0.01), whereas rural GPs have higher frequency and higher pressure of attendance (p < 0.001). Rural areas in the North of Navarra have a lower frequency of interviews and pressure of attendance than rural areas in the South (p < 0.02).

Values of frequency in Navarra are comparable with other countries.