Diabetic Patients – Use of Outpatient Health Services by Selected Specialties

Katerina Maláková , Charles University, Prague

Patients who are diagnosed with a specific disease can use health services from a variety of healthcare providers who are at least partially deal with the disease. They can use healthcare not only from one healthcare provider or medical specialty. However, particular segments of health services could have different functions. Within diabetic outpatient health care, the specialties focus primarily on the management of diabetes treatment (diabetology, general practice, internal medicine), others are associated with the treatment of other health complications (ophthalmology, neurology) or providing adequate care in the home environment (home care). In this paper, we focus on the management outpatient health services which provide the diagnosis and direct treatment of type 2 diabetes. The aim of this paper is to ascertain the influence of geodemograpfic charachteristics on the use of healthcare within selected specialties – outpatient diabetology, general practice, internal medicine. It could help to better understand the utilization of health services and evaluate functionality and effectiveness of the current healthcare system. Descriptive analyses and the general linear model for variance analysis were used. The source of data was the General Health Insurance Company of the Czech Republic. The structure of patients by sex and age was relatively consistent across studied specialties. It was also found that geodemographic characteristics had weak effect on attendance between the patient and the healthcare provider. However, the type of health services provider and their combination had considerable influence on attendance. This result also confirms preliminary results of variance analysis.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe