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Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic

BACKGROUND: The Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic (OAEOC) experienced a 5–6 % annual increase in patient visits between 2005 and 2011, which was significantly higher than the 2–3 % annual increase among registered Oslo residents. This study explored immigrant walk-in patients’ use of bot...

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Autores principales: Ruud, Sven Eirik, Aga, Ruth, Natvig, Bård, Hjortdahl, Per
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4596368/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26446671
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12873-015-0055-0
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author Ruud, Sven Eirik
Aga, Ruth
Natvig, Bård
Hjortdahl, Per
author_facet Ruud, Sven Eirik
Aga, Ruth
Natvig, Bård
Hjortdahl, Per
author_sort Ruud, Sven Eirik
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic (OAEOC) experienced a 5–6 % annual increase in patient visits between 2005 and 2011, which was significantly higher than the 2–3 % annual increase among registered Oslo residents. This study explored immigrant walk-in patients’ use of both the general emergency and trauma clinics of the OAEOC and their concomitant use of regular general practitioners (RGPs) in Oslo. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey of walk-in patients attending the OAEOC during 2 weeks in September 2009. We analysed demographic data, patients’ self-reported affiliation with the RGP scheme, self-reported number of OAEOC and RGP consultations during the preceding 12 months. The first approach used Poisson regression models to study visit frequency. The second approach compared the proportions of first- and second-generation immigrants and those from the four most frequently represented countries (Sweden, Pakistan, Somalia and Poland) among the patient population, with their respective proportions within the general Oslo population. RESULTS: The analysis included 3864 patients: 1821 attended the Department of Emergency General Practice (“general emergency clinic”); 2043 attended the Section for Orthopaedic Emergency (“trauma clinic”). Both first- and second-generation immigrants reported a significantly higher OAEOC visit frequency compared with Norwegians. Norwegians, representing 73 % of the city population accounted for 65 % of OAEOC visits. In contrast, first- and second-generation immigrants made up 27 % of the city population but accounted for 35 % of OAEOC visits. This proportional increase in use was primarily observed in the general emergency clinic (42 % of visits). Their proportional use of the trauma clinic (29 %) was similar to their proportion in the city. Among first-generation immigrants only 71 % were affiliated with the RGP system, in contrast to 96 % of Norwegians. Similar finding were obtained when immigrants were grouped by nationality. Compared to Norwegians, immigrants from Sweden, Pakistan and Somalia reported using the OAEOC significantly more often. Immigrants from Sweden, Poland and Somalia were over-represented at both clinics. The least frequent RGP affiliation was among immigrants from Sweden (32 %) and Poland (65 %). CONCLUSIONS: In Norway, immigrant subgroups use emergency health care services in different ways. Understanding these patterns of health-seeking behaviour may be important when designing emergency health services. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12873-015-0055-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-45963682015-10-08 Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic Ruud, Sven Eirik Aga, Ruth Natvig, Bård Hjortdahl, Per BMC Emerg Med Research Article BACKGROUND: The Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic (OAEOC) experienced a 5–6 % annual increase in patient visits between 2005 and 2011, which was significantly higher than the 2–3 % annual increase among registered Oslo residents. This study explored immigrant walk-in patients’ use of both the general emergency and trauma clinics of the OAEOC and their concomitant use of regular general practitioners (RGPs) in Oslo. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey of walk-in patients attending the OAEOC during 2 weeks in September 2009. We analysed demographic data, patients’ self-reported affiliation with the RGP scheme, self-reported number of OAEOC and RGP consultations during the preceding 12 months. The first approach used Poisson regression models to study visit frequency. The second approach compared the proportions of first- and second-generation immigrants and those from the four most frequently represented countries (Sweden, Pakistan, Somalia and Poland) among the patient population, with their respective proportions within the general Oslo population. RESULTS: The analysis included 3864 patients: 1821 attended the Department of Emergency General Practice (“general emergency clinic”); 2043 attended the Section for Orthopaedic Emergency (“trauma clinic”). Both first- and second-generation immigrants reported a significantly higher OAEOC visit frequency compared with Norwegians. Norwegians, representing 73 % of the city population accounted for 65 % of OAEOC visits. In contrast, first- and second-generation immigrants made up 27 % of the city population but accounted for 35 % of OAEOC visits. This proportional increase in use was primarily observed in the general emergency clinic (42 % of visits). Their proportional use of the trauma clinic (29 %) was similar to their proportion in the city. Among first-generation immigrants only 71 % were affiliated with the RGP system, in contrast to 96 % of Norwegians. Similar finding were obtained when immigrants were grouped by nationality. Compared to Norwegians, immigrants from Sweden, Pakistan and Somalia reported using the OAEOC significantly more often. Immigrants from Sweden, Poland and Somalia were over-represented at both clinics. The least frequent RGP affiliation was among immigrants from Sweden (32 %) and Poland (65 %). CONCLUSIONS: In Norway, immigrant subgroups use emergency health care services in different ways. Understanding these patterns of health-seeking behaviour may be important when designing emergency health services. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12873-015-0055-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4596368/ /pubmed/26446671 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12873-015-0055-0 Text en © Ruud et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ruud, Sven Eirik
Aga, Ruth
Natvig, Bård
Hjortdahl, Per
Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic
title Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic
title_full Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic
title_fullStr Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic
title_full_unstemmed Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic
title_short Use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the Oslo Accident and Emergency Outpatient Clinic
title_sort use of emergency care services by immigrants—a survey of walk-in patients who attended the oslo accident and emergency outpatient clinic
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4596368/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26446671
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12873-015-0055-0
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