Abstract

Background: The characteristics of frequent attenders have been studied extensively; however, there is a scarce literature on the frequent attenders’ use of different healthcare sectors’ and professionals’ services.

Aims: To characterise middle-aged frequent attenders (FAs) of the public primary healthcare (PPHC), and to examine their use of healthcare professionals’ services across PPHC, occupational (OHC), and private healthcare (PHC).

Methodology: The data used is part of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966’s 46-year follow-up study collected in 2012, during which 5484 cohort members answered to a questionnaire about use of healthcare services. A FA was defined as a patient who had made ≥ 8 PPHC visits within the previous year. Cross-tabulation, and binary logistic regression analysis were used.

Results: FAs (n=519, 9.5%) primarily used PPHC services, whereas their use of PHC and OHC services was much lower (45.5%, 9.5%, and 10.2% of all consultations, respectively). Within the PPHC, FAs used a wide variety of services provided by different healthcare professionals, particularly those offered by physiotherapists (198 FAs used 81.8% of services) and psychologists (85 FAs used 88.5% of services). Unemployment, drawing a disability pension, ex-smoking, poor or decent self-reported health, having ≥ 2 chronic health conditions (p≤0.001), having one chronic health condition (p≤0.01), female gender, dissatisfaction with the current life situation, abstinence from alcohol, heavy drinking, and BMI ≥ 30 (p<0.05) seemed to be associated with frequent attendance.

Conclusions: FAs have complex needs and seem to use primarily different healthcare professionals’ services within public primary healthcare, whereas their use of private and occupational healthcare services is noticeably lower. Frequent attenders’ service use includes a wide variety of healthcare providers’ services in addition to physicians’ services.