Chronic patients--persons with diabetes frequent attenders in Croatian family practice

Chronic diseases cause high frequency visits and generate the long-term frequent attenders (FAs). The connection between frequent attendance and specific morbidities in the health care systems in transitional Europe has been underestimated. We investigated whether frequent visits of chronic patients in primary care are related to characteristic of chronic disease (diabetes mellitus) and whether this is influenced by the family practice in the transitional health care. We analyzed the number of visits a day time work for 490 persons with diabetes in the period 1997 to 2000. As the cut-off points between frequent attenders and non frequent attenders (NFAs) we used the value of the third quartile (Q3) of visits determined for the sex and age groups in the parallel study in the whole population. The analysis was performed for 23 variables: demographic characteristics of patients, disease characteristic and variables of physician. Logistic regressions were employed to identify the predictors of FAs/NFAs. 56.9% (in 1997) to 62.4% (in 2000) persons with diabetes were FAs, compared to 22.4% to 24.3% FAs patients in the whole population. Logistic regression analysis significantly differentiated the two group of visits with 68% accuracy. 4 variables are significant predictors for FAs/NFAs: diabetes as the main disease (p = 0.0005), diet-only-treatment (p = 0.0062), treatment by secondary care (p = 0.0116), and if glycated hemoglobin test (HbA1c) is determined (p = 0.0272). Understanding the similarities and differences of FAs/NFAs persons with diabetes may be important in improving the care and management of chronic diseases in family medicine in transitional health care systems.