Regional health care profiles – an improved method for generating case studies on the catchment areas of envisaged primary health care units in Austria: a report to the InfAct Joint Action

BACKGROUND: The recent Austrian Primary Care Act established new primary health care units (PHCUs) and obliged them to draw up a “care strategy” specifying their focal care tasks and objectives and emphasizing the health care needs of the population in their catchment area with its specific local health and epidemiological profile. The main purpose of these care strategies is thus to ensure that care-providers meet the local needs, but they also provide a rationale for evaluation and organizational development. To assist new PHCUs in establishing care strategies it was necessary to develop a method for automatically generating comprehensive local case studies for any freely definable location in Austria. RESULTS: We designed an interactive report generator capable of producing location-specific regional health care profiles for a PHCU located in any of Austria’s 2122 municipalities and of calculating the radius of its catchment area (defined by different levels of maximum car-travelling times). The reports so generated, called “regional health care profiles for primary health care” (RHCPs/PHC), are in comprehensive PDF report format. The core of each report is a set of 35 indicators, classified under five health and health service domains. The reports include an introductory text, definitions, a map, a graphic and tabular presentation of all indicator values, including information on local, supra-regional and national value distribution, a ranking, and numbers of service providers (e.g. pharmacies, surgeries, nursing homes) located within the catchment area. CONCLUSIONS: The RHCPs/PHC support primary health care planning, efforts to improve care-effectiveness, and strategic organizational development by providing comprehensive information on the health of the population, the utilization of health services and the health care structures within the catchment area. In addition to revealing the scope and nature of the health care needed, they also provide information on what public health approaches are necessary. RHCPs/PHC for different locations have already been distributed to numerous stakeholders and primary health care providers in Austria.