Home continuity reduces income by 30%

A study by the Barcelona Esquerre Primary Health Care Consortium (Capsbe) and the Clínic-Idibaps research institute has shown that, in people who need home care, having it always carried out by the same doctor or nurse reduces by one 30% the risk of hospital admission.

The work, published in the magazine Annals of Family Medicinehas followed 1,207 patients from three primary care centers in Barcelona over a year, and has found that, in these centers and for each patient, the 73% of the visits are made by the same doctor and the 83% the same nurse, reports the Clínic-Idibaps in a statement this Friday.

Previous studies had shown that continuity with the same doctor can reduce patient mortality, and the latter has revealed that, when continuity of care is at least one 75%is associated with a reduction in 36% of hospital admissions, a reduction in 31% of ambulance use and a reduction in 31% of emergency room visits.

The deputy to the Capsbe management and researcher of the study Silvia Roura points out that Catalonia and Spain have a unique health system in the world, in which the entire population is assigned a reference doctor and nurse in primary care, but the impact of this model “has been little studied.”

Continue making efforts

The head of transversal projects at Capsbe, researcher at Idibaps and first author of the study, Carmen Herranzpointed out that the results support “continuing efforts to ensure that the same professionals always visit patients and to minimize visits from other professionals, even if they are from the same team.”

“We must take into account that people who need home care are usually very elderly people, with multiple chronic diseases and with great difficulties in traveling to a hospital,” he added.