An Analysis of Referrals Done by Primary Care Centers to Tertiary Care Institutions

TL;DR

This study analyzes referral patterns from primary care centers in Ankara, showing that most referrals come from inner city clinics and are often for chest pain or trauma.

Contribution

The study provides insights into referral trends in primary care, highlighting the role of inner city clinics and common referral reasons.

Findings

Most referrals were from inner city healthcare centers (81.0%).

Family healthcare centers made the majority of referrals (75.3%).

Chest pain was the most common reason for referrals (16.3%).

Abstract

Background and aim

Primary care is an important element for every healthcare system around the world. Providing and optimizing the connection between the primary care centers and advanced clinical centers is a key concept for a well-functioning healthcare system. Our aim in this study was to analyze and review the referral data of primary care centers located in Ankara, Türkiye.

Materials and methods

We collected the entire referral data from the primary care centers, totaling 8,746 patients between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2023 by using emergency medical services (EMS) transfer in Ankara. Demographic data, call reasons, transfer centers and transfer-related characteristics of the patients were recorded retrospectively, grouped by year, using EMS data.

Results

Our findings have shown that most of the referrals were made for Turkish citizens with 8,360 (95.6%) (p<0.001). Healthcare centers located in inner city had the most referrals made with 7,087 (81.0%) (p<0.001). Majority of the referrals were made by physicians in family healthcare centers with 6,583 (75.3%) (p<0.001) with chest pain being the most common diagnosis for referral initiation with 1,429 (16.3%) (p<0.001). This was followed by trauma, with 1,172 (13.4%) (p<0.001). Most common cause for trauma was falls with 613 (52.3%) (p<0.001).

Conclusion

Our data revealed important elements of local referral patterns. According to our data, majority of the referrals were made by inner city healthcare facilities. Family healthcare centers formed most of the referral requests. For this reason, strengthening these centers is important to prevent unnecessary resource use and delays.