Primary care referrals of patients with potentially serious diseases to the emergency department or a quick diagnosis unit: a cross-sectional retrospective study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In Spain, primary healthcare (PHC) referrals for diagnostic procedures are subject to long waiting-times, and physicians and patients often use the emergency department (ED) as a shortcut. We aimed to determine whether patients evaluated at a hospital outpatient quick diagnosis unit (QDU) who were referred to ED from 12 PHC centers could have been directly referred to QDU, thus avoiding ED visits. As a secondary objective, we determined the proportion of QDU patients who might have been evaluated in a less rapid, non-QDU setting.

Methods

We carried out a cross-sectional retrospective cohort study of patients with potentially serious conditions attended by the QDU from December 2007 to December 2012. We established 2 groups of patients: 1) patients referred from PH

SUBMITTER: Bosch X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4021313 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature