Primary health care utilization for alcohol-attributed diseases in British Columbia Canada 2001–2011

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to determine whether general practitioner visits for alcohol-attributed diseases increased in a decade when several regulatory changes were made to the distribution and price of alcohol in British Columbia Canada. METHODS: General practitioner consultations for alcohol-attributed diseases were examined using data from British Columbia’s Medical Services Plan database. Negative binomial regression was used to measure the significance of yearly variations using incidence rate ratios by disease type per year. RESULTS: From 2001 to 2011, 690,401 visits were made to general practitioners by 198,623 persons with alcohol-attributed diseases. Most visits (86.2%) were for alcohol dependency syndrome (N = 595,371). General practitioner visits for alcohol-attributed diseases increased significantly (p < .001) by 53.3% from 14,882 cases in 2001 to 22,823 cases in 2011. While the number of cases increased from 2001–2011, the frequency of visits to general practitioners significantly decreased from 3.9 in 2001 to 2.7 visits per case in 2011 (F = 428.1, p < .001). CONCLUSION: From 2001 to 2011 there were significant increases in the number of persons presenting to general practitioners with alcohol-attributed diseases in British Columbia. The results of this study demonstrate the need to provide enhanced support to general practitioners in the treatment of patients with substance use disorders given the increasing number of primary health care patients with alcohol-attributed diseases.