Determining factors for the increase in self-referrals to the Emergency Department of a rural hospital in Huelva (Spain)

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the increase of self-referral patients at the Emergency Department of Riotinto District Hospital (in Huelva, Spain) during a short period. The study focused on patients’ profiles to identify key factors that explained the increase of self-referrals. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Retrospective descriptive study using patient’s data from a hospital emergency department between 2003–2015, excluding the period 2012–14 due to the lack of records. Socio-demographic variables, type of referral, access to health services, hospital route, transfer time and organisational changes were analysed, among other factors. Descriptive statistics, chi-square test, and binary logistic regression analysis were used. RESULTS: Self-referral patients to the hospital emergency department revealed a growing trend. Logistic regression model showed that the variables that best predict its occurrence were the health system changes from 2008 and the time it takes to get to the Extra-hospital Emergency Services, where those changes act as modifiers of the effect. From 2008, the likelihood of self-referral in towns with an Extra-hospital Emergency Service over 2 minutes away by car was of 76.43%. When including the triage level, the logistic regression model showed that 83.1% of patients referred themselves. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in the health system and in the time for patients to get to the reference hospital from their origin, affect the likelihood of self-referral to the emergency department. Once the patient's severity level was included, this variable, along with the time to get to the emergency department, modified the probability of self-referral to the emergency department. We found an increase in hospital services together with a reduction of resources in the primary care emergency system. This may have led to inefficiencies in the public health system, together with an increase in self-referrals and greater problems to service users.