The primary care performance and its relationship with preventable hospitalizations

Abstract

Introduction. Primary care services are important for the delivery of comprehensive health services. The coordination and continuity of care are the main characteristics to approach non-communicable diseases like diabetes mellitus, which has been classified as ambulatory care sensitive condition. The high hospitalization rate might reveal poor and inadequate out¬patient care, implying that the population did not access care, or that care was not effective. Materials and methods. All emergency consultations within 12 months in one hospital in Quito were analyzed according to their ICD-10 codes. They were compared with the consultations at the first level of care facilities of the Ministry of Public Health, from January 1st, 2015 until one day before the emergency consultation.
Results. Of 41 patients who attended with a diagnosis of preventable diseases 58% were wo¬men, 43% (18) required hospitalization. The average number of days of hospitalization was 6.51, with a dispersion of 13.0; the number of external consultations prior to the emergency was 3.07, with a maximum of 22 consultations. The hospitalized patients had, on average, 5.05 outpatient visits before the emergency and hospitalization, approximately 4 more than the average (0.95) of the non-hospitalized patients.
Discussion. The high hospitalization rate, due to this condition, might reveal poor and inadequate ambulatory care, nevertheless it is necessary to analyze the severity of the cases in the study.