Observational study of home visits in Slovene general practice: patient characteristics, practice characteristics and health care utilization.

BACKGROUND: Home visits are an important way of delivering primary health care, but there is a long-term decrease in home visit rates in many countries.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate patient characteristics, morbidity, functional status, quality of life, satisfaction with care, practice characteristics and health care utilization in general practice patients visited at home at least once in a study year.

METHODS: The design of the study was a cross-sectional survey of the patients of a stratified sample of 36 GP offices in Slovenia using a self-administered questionnaire. Sixty consecutive patients in sampled practices contacting the doctor in the office in the study period in March 1998 were included in the analysis. The age, sex, educational status, residence, presence of chronic condition, measures of anxiety or depressive symptoms, rates of patients who expressed a need for emergency care in 1 year, rates of self-care, measures of functional status, quality of life, satisfaction with care, rates of using GP practice visits and out-of-hours services and rates of using specialist or hospital services were recorded in a home-visited group versus a non-visited group.

RESULTS: A total of 277 patients (15.4%) were reported to have at least one visit in the study year. Patients visited in their homes were older, predominantly female, better educated, had lower perceptions of their functional status and well-being and they used primary health services more frequently than others. Their GPs were more likely to be males, and were more likely to practise in rural areas, in solo practices as private practitioners.

CONCLUSION: Home visits remain an important part of GP work in countries in transition, such as Slovenia, especially for more seriously ill patients.