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General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?

BACKGROUND: The introduction of large-scale out-of-hours GP cooperatives has led to questions about increased distances between the GP cooperatives and the homes of patients and the increasing waiting times for home visits in urgent cases. We studied the relationship between the patient's waiti...

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Autores principales: Giesen, Paul, van Lin, Nieke, Mokkink, Henk, van den Bosch, Wil, Grol, Richard
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804268/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17295925
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-7-19
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author Giesen, Paul
van Lin, Nieke
Mokkink, Henk
van den Bosch, Wil
Grol, Richard
author_facet Giesen, Paul
van Lin, Nieke
Mokkink, Henk
van den Bosch, Wil
Grol, Richard
author_sort Giesen, Paul
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The introduction of large-scale out-of-hours GP cooperatives has led to questions about increased distances between the GP cooperatives and the homes of patients and the increasing waiting times for home visits in urgent cases. We studied the relationship between the patient's waiting time for a home visit and the distance to the GP cooperative. Further, we investigated if other factors (traffic intensity, home visit intensity, time of day, and degree of urgency) influenced waiting times. METHODS: Cross-sectional study at four GP cooperatives. We used variance analysis to calculate waiting times for various categories of traffic intensity, home visit intensity, time of day, and degree of urgency. We used multiple logistic regression analysis to calculate to what degree these factors affected the ability to meet targets in urgent cases. RESULTS: The average waiting time for 5827 consultations was 30.5 min. Traffic intensity, home visit intensity, time of day and urgency of the complaint all seemed to affect waiting times significantly. A total of 88.7% of all patients were seen within 1 hour. In the case of life-threatening complaints (U1), 68.8% of the patients were seen within 15 min, and 95.6% of those with acute complaints (U2) were seen within 1 hour. For patients with life-threatening complaints (U1) the percentage of visits that met the time target of 15 minuts decreased from 86.5% (less than 2.5 km) to 16.7% (equals or more than 20 km). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Although home visits waiting times increase with increasing distance from the GP cooperative, it appears that traffic intensity, home visit intensity, and urgency also influence waiting times. For patients with life-threatening complaints waiting times increase sharply with the distance.
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spelling pubmed-18042682007-02-24 General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances? Giesen, Paul van Lin, Nieke Mokkink, Henk van den Bosch, Wil Grol, Richard BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: The introduction of large-scale out-of-hours GP cooperatives has led to questions about increased distances between the GP cooperatives and the homes of patients and the increasing waiting times for home visits in urgent cases. We studied the relationship between the patient's waiting time for a home visit and the distance to the GP cooperative. Further, we investigated if other factors (traffic intensity, home visit intensity, time of day, and degree of urgency) influenced waiting times. METHODS: Cross-sectional study at four GP cooperatives. We used variance analysis to calculate waiting times for various categories of traffic intensity, home visit intensity, time of day, and degree of urgency. We used multiple logistic regression analysis to calculate to what degree these factors affected the ability to meet targets in urgent cases. RESULTS: The average waiting time for 5827 consultations was 30.5 min. Traffic intensity, home visit intensity, time of day and urgency of the complaint all seemed to affect waiting times significantly. A total of 88.7% of all patients were seen within 1 hour. In the case of life-threatening complaints (U1), 68.8% of the patients were seen within 15 min, and 95.6% of those with acute complaints (U2) were seen within 1 hour. For patients with life-threatening complaints (U1) the percentage of visits that met the time target of 15 minuts decreased from 86.5% (less than 2.5 km) to 16.7% (equals or more than 20 km). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Although home visits waiting times increase with increasing distance from the GP cooperative, it appears that traffic intensity, home visit intensity, and urgency also influence waiting times. For patients with life-threatening complaints waiting times increase sharply with the distance. BioMed Central 2007-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC1804268/ /pubmed/17295925 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-7-19 Text en Copyright © 2007 Giesen et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Giesen, Paul
van Lin, Nieke
Mokkink, Henk
van den Bosch, Wil
Grol, Richard
General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
title General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
title_full General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
title_fullStr General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
title_full_unstemmed General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
title_short General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
title_sort general practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804268/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17295925
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-7-19
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