ArticleClinical epidemiology2020
Sociodemographic Characteristics Associated with Contacts to Emergency Medical Services and Out-of-Hours Primary Care: An Observational Study of 2.3 Million Citizens.
Article in Clinical epidemiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Out-of-hours services in Zealand, Denmark. Consequences of changeover from GP-cooperative to integrated deputized services. A retrospective cohort study.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2026Article
- General practice consultation patterns and patient factors predicting older patients' use of out-of-hours services: a nationwide register-based cohort study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2026Article
- Adverse working conditions in Romanian out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC): an interview study.Human resources for health · 2025Article
- Nationwide study of emergency care quality for patients with substance use disorders and dual diagnoses across three distinct patient populations.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Observational
- Increasing emergency number utilisation is not driven by low-acuity calls: an observational study of 1.5 million emergency calls (2018-2021) from Berlin.BMC medicine · 2023Observational
- Patient characteristics and dispatch responses of urinary tract infections in a prehospital setting in Copenhagen, Denmark: a retrospective cohort study.BMC primary care · 2022Observational
- The potential of new prediction models for emergency medical dispatch prioritisation of patients with chest pain: a cohort study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2022Observational
- Socioeconomic Disparities in Prehospital Emergency Care in a Danish Tax-Financed Healthcare System: Nationwide Cohort Study.Clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOut-of-hours (OOH) health care services are often divided into emergency medical services (EMS) and OOH primary care (OOH-PC). EMS and many OOH-PC use telephone triage, yet the patient still makes the initial choice of contacting a service and which service. Sociodemographic characteristics are associated with help-seeking. Yet, differences in characteristics for EMS and OOH-PC patients have not been investigated in any large-scale cohort studies. Such knowledge may contribute to organizing OOH services to match patient needs. Thus, in this study we aimed to explore which sociodemographic patient characteristics were associated with utilizing OOH health care and to explore which sociodemographic characteristics were associated with EMS or OOH-PC contact.
methodsA population-based observational cohort study of inhabitants in two regions (North Denmark Region and Capital Region of Copenhagen) with or without contact to OOH services during 2016 was conducted. Associations between sociodemographic characteristics and OOH contacts (and EMS versus OOH-PC contact) were evaluated by regression analyses.
resultsWe identified 619,857 patients with OOH contact. Female sex (IRR=1.16 (95% CI: 1.16-1.17)), non-western ethnicity (IRR=1.02 (95% CI: 1.01-1.02)), living alone (IRR=1.08 (95% CI: 1.08-1.09)), age groups ≥81 years (IRR=2.00 (95% CI: 1.98-2.02)) and 0-18 years (IRR=1.66 (95% CI: 1.66-1.67)) and low income (IRR=1.41 (95% CI: 1.40-1.42)) were more likely to contact OOH health care compared to males, Danish ethnicity, citizens cohabitating, age 31-65 years and high income. Disability pensioners more often contacted OOH care (IRR=1.79 (95% CI: 1.77-1.81) compared to employees. Old age (≥81 years) (OR=3.21 (95% CI: 3.13-3.30)), receiving cash benefits (OR=2.45 (95% CI: 2.36-2.54)), low income (OR=1.76 (95% CI: 1.72-1.81)) and living alone (OR=1.40 (95% CI: 1.37-1.42)) were all associated with EMS contacts rather than OOH-PC contacts.
conclusionSeveral sociodemographic factors were associated with contacting a health care service outside office hours and with contacting EMS rather than OOH-PC. Old age, low income, low education and low socioeconomic status were of greatest importance.
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