OBJECTIVE: To study the characteristics of emergency care within Primary Care (ECPC), which determine the use of hospital emergency services (HES). DESIGN: Retrospective study. The unit of analysis was the patient attended at the HES. SETTING: Xàtiva Hospital records and data from Primary Care Management, regarding the type of ECPC and the distance from the patient's town of residence to the hospital. PATIENTS AND OTHER PARTICIPANTS: The data of all the patients, a total of 15,290 cases, attended at the HES during the first six months of 1992 were analysed. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We constructed a logistic regression model whose explicative variables were the type of ECPC and the distance to the hospital. The variable reply was the probability for each town of causing a high use of HES. We obtained a model whose predictive capacity was 82.98%, in which, independently of distance, the probability of causing a high use of HES was ordered from low to high, as follows: 1) Towns where the Primary Care Team (PCT) physically provided ongoing care in the town itself. 2) Towns attended by a normal Emergency Service (in the town itself). 3) Towns where the PCT provided ongoing care of a localised nature. 4) Towns where the PCT physically provided ongoing care in another town. The relation of distance to the use of HES was inverse. CONCLUSIONS: Distance and the different types of ECPC affect the use of HES.
OBJECTIVE: To study the characteristics of emergency care within Primary Care (ECPC), which determine the use of hospital emergency services (HES). DESIGN: Retrospective study. The unit of analysis was the patient attended at the HES. SETTING: Xàtiva Hospital records and data from Primary Care Management, regarding the type of ECPC and the distance from the patient's town of residence to the hospital. PATIENTS AND OTHER PARTICIPANTS: The data of all the patients, a total of 15,290 cases, attended at the HES during the first six months of 1992 were analysed. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We constructed a logistic regression model whose explicative variables were the type of ECPC and the distance to the hospital. The variable reply was the probability for each town of causing a high use of HES. We obtained a model whose predictive capacity was 82.98%, in which, independently of distance, the probability of causing a high use of HES was ordered from low to high, as follows: 1) Towns where the Primary Care Team (PCT) physically provided ongoing care in the town itself. 2) Towns attended by a normal Emergency Service (in the town itself). 3) Towns where the PCT provided ongoing care of a localised nature. 4) Towns where the PCT physically provided ongoing care in another town. The relation of distance to the use of HES was inverse. CONCLUSIONS: Distance and the different types of ECPC affect the use of HES.