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The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic
BACKGROUND: In the Netherlands, General Practitioners (GP) are usually the first point of contact with a health professional for most health problems. Out-of-hours (OOH) primary care is provided by regional OOH services. Changes in consultation rates at OOH services may be regarded as a warning syst...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9122805/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35597939 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08096-x |
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author | Ramerman, Lotte Rijpkema, Corinne Bos, Nanne Flinterman, Linda E. Verheij, Robert A. |
author_facet | Ramerman, Lotte Rijpkema, Corinne Bos, Nanne Flinterman, Linda E. Verheij, Robert A. |
author_sort | Ramerman, Lotte |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In the Netherlands, General Practitioners (GP) are usually the first point of contact with a health professional for most health problems. Out-of-hours (OOH) primary care is provided by regional OOH services. Changes in consultation rates at OOH services may be regarded as a warning system for failures elsewhere in the healthcare system. Therefore in this study, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the use of primary care OOH services during the first year of the pandemic. METHODS: Routine electronic health records data were used from 60% of OOH services in the Netherlands, collected by the Nivel Primary Care Database. We compared consultation rates per week (2020) for COVID-19-like symptoms and other health problems (e.g. small traumas, urinary tract infections), for different age groups, the proportion of remote consultations, and different levels of urgency during the pandemic compared to the same period in 2019. RESULTS: The number of consultations for COVID-19-like symptoms peaked at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while consultations for other health problems decreased. These changes in consultation rates differed between age groups. Remote consultations took place more frequently for all health problems, while the proportion of non-urgent health problems increased. CONCLUSION: There were significant changes in the number of consultations and the proportion that were remote for COVID-19-like symptoms and other health problems. Especially care for babies and young children decreased, while the number of consultations for older adults remained stable. The continued use of OOH services by older adults suggests there were unmet care needs elsewhere in our healthcare system. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08096-x. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9122805 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91228052022-05-21 The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic Ramerman, Lotte Rijpkema, Corinne Bos, Nanne Flinterman, Linda E. Verheij, Robert A. BMC Health Serv Res Research BACKGROUND: In the Netherlands, General Practitioners (GP) are usually the first point of contact with a health professional for most health problems. Out-of-hours (OOH) primary care is provided by regional OOH services. Changes in consultation rates at OOH services may be regarded as a warning system for failures elsewhere in the healthcare system. Therefore in this study, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the use of primary care OOH services during the first year of the pandemic. METHODS: Routine electronic health records data were used from 60% of OOH services in the Netherlands, collected by the Nivel Primary Care Database. We compared consultation rates per week (2020) for COVID-19-like symptoms and other health problems (e.g. small traumas, urinary tract infections), for different age groups, the proportion of remote consultations, and different levels of urgency during the pandemic compared to the same period in 2019. RESULTS: The number of consultations for COVID-19-like symptoms peaked at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while consultations for other health problems decreased. These changes in consultation rates differed between age groups. Remote consultations took place more frequently for all health problems, while the proportion of non-urgent health problems increased. CONCLUSION: There were significant changes in the number of consultations and the proportion that were remote for COVID-19-like symptoms and other health problems. Especially care for babies and young children decreased, while the number of consultations for older adults remained stable. The continued use of OOH services by older adults suggests there were unmet care needs elsewhere in our healthcare system. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08096-x. BioMed Central 2022-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9122805/ /pubmed/35597939 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08096-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Ramerman, Lotte Rijpkema, Corinne Bos, Nanne Flinterman, Linda E. Verheij, Robert A. The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic |
title | The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_full | The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_fullStr | The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_short | The use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_sort | use of out-of-hours primary care during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9122805/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35597939 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08096-x |
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