Frequent attenders in general practice: a retrospective 20-year follow-up study.
retrospective_cohort · Level III
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 11462318.
- Also identified by PMC identifier PMC1314050.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
We describe a 20-year retrospective study of 58 patients with a cross-matched control group in one practice, who initially attended more than 12 times in 1975. The study establishes that frequent attendance is not consistent; the majority of high-attending patients in general practice revert over a short period of time to a normal consulting pattern. Diseases, rather than patients, appear to dictate high consulting rates. Consistent high attendance is largely owing to multiple pathology.