Over utilization of Primary Care Pediatric facilities

Aim: to quantify from primary sources the incidence of children that over utilization of primary care paediatric facilities. Design: observational prospective longitudinal multi centre study. Setting: health Centres from 17th Area in Valencian Community. Patients: all 349 children aged 0-14 years, from consecutive consultation to paediatric doctors during 3 days of consultation. They were followed for 3 months searching for consultations during this time period. Programmed consultation were not included. Measures: to analyse the number of visits made by each children and the type of consultation. The meaning variable was the measure of percentage of children with over utilization, defined as mean of consultation in the sample plus one standard deviation, and it was 7 or more visits/children during 3 months. Results: mean of visits was 3,7 (1 to 23) in 3 months. 14,9% of children were over users and they generated 36,5% of total visits. Conclusions: over utilization is an important problem in paediatric primary care clinics. The number of visits in over users is 2,5 times greater. If these children were not over users it had been 7-8 schedules more by day and doctor that surely would makes quality care better.