Characteristics of patients with frequent contact with general practice.

Background: Frequent attenders (more than 11 annual contacts) use more resources than most other patients in general practice.

Aim: We aim to study what characterises frequent attenders related to age, gender, mode of contact (face-to-face, email, phone), and patient contact (GP or GP staff).

Design & setting: We use patient data from 11 Danish GP clinics and 38.874 patients covering a 12-month period.

Method: Bivariate as well as regression analyses of patient data were used.

Results: Frequent attenders exist in all age groups, but with different frequencies. In the age group 55-64 years 25% of patients were frequent attenders, this increased to 33% in the next age decade from age 65-74 years and reached 48% among those above age 74 years. Frequent attenders have a different user pattern related to physical visits, phone consultations, or email consultations than other patients. In their contact to the GP clinic, the frequent attender is relatively more often in contact with the practice staff than a GP compared to other patients.

Conclusion: Within our Danish patient population,22% had more than 11 annual contacts to their GP clinic. These frequent attenders are in general terms characterized by being women, above 65 years of age, having 20 annual contacts to the GP clinic, and having plus 10 diagnoses. For the entire patient population, the GP handles 40% of the patient contacts (60% by other staff members), and this percentage is lowest among frequent attenders. E-mail contact is more frequent among frequent attenders than other patients.