ArticleJournal of public health research2012
The Ecology of Medical Care in Norway: Wide Use of General Practitioners may not Necessarily Keep Patients out of Hospitals.
Article in Journal of public health research, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- 'Shades of grey': a focus group study on diagnostic uncertainty among general practitioners using point-of-care ultrasound.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2025Article
- The Ecology of Medical Care in Shanghai: Temporal Trends and International Comparisons.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2025Article
- The landscape of medical care consumption in Israel: a nationwide population cross-sectional study.Israel journal of health policy research · 2022Article
- The Norwegian PraksisNett: a nationwide practice-based research network with a novel IT infrastructure.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2022Article
- The use of health care during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: repeated cross-sectional survey of the adult Swiss general population.BMC public health · 2021Observational
- Re-examining access points to the different levels of health care: a cross-sectional series in Austria.European journal of public health · 2019Article
- The ecology of medical care: access points to the health care system in Austria and other developed countries.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2019Article
- Dilemmas of medical overuse in general practice - A focus group study.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2019Article
- Relations Between the Use of Electronic Health and the Use of General Practitioner and Somatic Specialist Visits in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2018Article
- Reassessing the Ecology of Medical Care in Japan.Journal of community health · 2017Article
- The use of CAM providers and psychiatric outpatient services in people with anxiety/depression: a cross-sectional survey.BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2016Article
- The Ecology of Medical Care in Korea.Journal of Korean medical science · 2016Article
- Continuity of GP care is associated with lower use of complementary and alternative medical providers: a population-based cross-sectional survey.BMC health services research · 2014Article
- Continuity of GP care is related to reduced specialist healthcare use: a cross-sectional survey.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOur aim was to investigate the pattern of self reported symptoms and utilisation of health care services in Norway. DESIGN AND
methodsWith data from the cross-sectional Tromsø Study (2007-8), we estimated population proportions reporting symptoms and use of seven different health services. By logistic regression we estimated differences according to age and gender.
resultsIn this study 12,982 persons aged 30-87 years participated, constituting 65.7% of those invited. More than 900/1000 reported symptoms or health problems in a year as well as in a month, and 214/1000 and 816/1000 visited a general practitioner once or more in a month and a year, respectively. The corresponding figures were 91/1000 and 421/1000 for specialist outpatient visits, and 14/1000 and 116/1000 for hospitalisations. Physiotherapists were visited by 210/1000, chiropractors by 76/1000, complementary and alternative medical providers by 127/1000, and dentists by 692/1000 in a year. Women used most health care services more than men, but genders used hospitalisations and chiropractors equally. Utilisation of all services increased with age, except chiropractors, dentists and complementary and alternative medical providers.
conclusionsAlmost the entire population reported health related problems during the previous year, and most residents visited a general practitioner. Yet there were high rates of inpatient and outpatient specialist utilisation. We suggest that wide use of general practitioners may not necessarily keep patients out of specialist care and hospitals. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: the authors would like to thank Tor Anvik for a significant contribution in developing the idea for the study, Tom Wilsgård for useful discussions about the statistical analyses and Jarl-Stian Olsen for graphic design of the figures. They would also thank the people of Tromsø and The Tromsø Study for giving data to this study. Northern Norway Regional Health Authority and The University of Tromsø funded this research.
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