[Induced prescription from reference hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron to general practitioners].

OBJECTIVES Our objectives were to describe proportion of patients with induced prescription (IP) from reference hospital, the information about diagnosis and treatment that GP get as well as their agreement with the prescription. We also analyzed the quality of IP assessed by GP's quality of prescription criteria. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Six urban health care centers. PARTICIPANTS Patients and drugs prescribed from the reference hospital and derivated to health care center to get treatments. MEASUREMENTS Origin of patients, diagnosis, treatment and the GP's agreement with it, and whether that information was enough to allow patient's control. MAIN RESULTS Thirty six GP collected data from 323 patients and 844 drugs from reference hospital. 52% (95% CI, 47-58) of IP came from the emergency room. Medical conditions more frequently associated with IP were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lumbosciatica and traumatism. The most prescribed drugs were analgesics and NSAIDs. GP's agreement with IP reached 63% (95% CI, 60-67). Most frequent disagreement cause was drug selection (61 drugs; 7.2% of IP). In some 20% (95% CI, 16-25) of patients information wasn't sufficient enough to assume patient's control. CONCLUSIONS A stronger relation between GP's and hospital doctors would be needed to establish common treatments for patients' frequent conditions and their follow-up.