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[Compliance with the new model referral forms from primary care to hospital emergency services]
B González-Grajera1, R Hormeño, F Buitrago
1Unidad Docente de Medicina de Familia y Comunitaria, Centro de Salud Universitario La Paz, Badajoz.
Objective:
To evaluate the compliance with the new model forms for referral to hospital emergency services and possible differences between urban and rural health centres, and among general practitioners and family & community medicine specialists.
Design:
An observational, crossover study.
Setting:
Health Area 1 in the province of Badajoz.
Participants:
800 new model forms for referral, equivalent to the same number of patients, sent to the casualty department of the referral hospital.
Measurements And Main Results:
76.7% of the referrals came from the rural environment, and the other 23.3% from urban health centres. Gathering anamnesis and symptoms is the only criterion which exceeds 90% of the recording in both rural and urban settings, and among general practitioners and family medicine specialists. Only 23.9% of referrals (23.8% in rural health centres and 22.7% in urban ones) met the four criteria which were considered indispensable for a minimum level of compliance. These percentages were 23.2% and 31.7% when broken down for general practitioners and family medicine specialists (no significant differences).
Conclusions:
There was a low level of compliance with the new model form for referral: there were no statistically significant differences in compliance between rural and urban health centres, nor between general practitioners and family & community medicine specialists.