BACKGROUND What decisions do patients expect the general practitioner to take within the consultation and to what extent are these expectations fulfilled? What factors influence patients' expectations and general practitioners' actions? AIM This study aimed to examine these questions with reference to prescribing and hospital referral. METHOD The study covered 1080 consultations with 12 gen...

Until now, there have been no published researches evaluating referrals from family doctors (FDs) or utilizations of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PMR) in Croatia. The main study aim was of determining the referral trend and the trends in the number of PMR consultations. The data were collected from the Croatian Health Statistics Yearbook, 1995-2012. The results of this study pointed ou...

Long wait times for specialist consultation affect patient care and health outcomes adversely. The wait-time continuum has various components, one of which is the wait time from referral request by a family physician to specialist appointment. The Committee on Utilization, Review, and Education (CURE), comprising a group of family physicians from the Department of Family Medicine at St Joseph’s...

BACKGROUND: We previously demonstrated that a computerized psychiatric screening interview (the PRIME-MD) can be used in the Emergency Department (ED) waiting room to identify patients with mental illness. In that trial, however, informing the ED physician of the PRIME-MD results did not increase the frequency of psychiatric diagnosis, consultation or referral. We conducted this study to determ...

BACKGROUND Demands on gastroenterology are growing, as a result of the high prevalence of digestive diseases, the impact of colon cancer screening programs and an aging population. Prioritizing referrals to gastroenterology would assist in managing wait times. Our objectives were (1) to assess whether there were consistent criteria to guide referrals from family physicians for gastroenterologic...

The development and implementation of quality referral systems reflects sound national health planning. This review appraised the data on referral systems, in particular psychiatric referrals, with special reference to Saudi Arabia. A computer search was made of relevant literature in the past 2 decades. The rate and process of referring patients through referral letters varies globally across ...

The authors reviewed the all referral cases from different inpatient and outpatient department, in Nepal Medical College and Teaching Hospital. It was a descriptive study. There were 484 referred cases during the study period. Around half the referral were from department of medicine (49.8%), surgery (11.2%), Eye/ENT (10.3%). The referral rate was 1.4%, with an average three cases per day. Amon...