The Effects of the Distance Between the Family Health Center and the Hospital on Patient Applications

Mustafa Bayraktar

Keywords: Family Health Center, hospital, distance, patient admission

Aim:

It was aimed to investigate the effects of the distance of Family Health Centers (FHCs) to the hospital on patients' FHC application numbers and reasons for admission.

Method:

Between January 2016 and January 2020, the total number of applications and the reasons for admission of patients who applied to a total of four family medicine units in two Education FHCs in two different localizations in Erzurum were retrospectively screened. The distances of the two Education FHCs to the nearest hospital were calculated on Google Maps®. It was not taken after 2020, as the reasons for patient admission may change due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the number of people registered in family medicine units is not the same, the number of applications per thousand people for each FHC was calculated and compared.

Results:

The distances of the two Education FHCs to the nearest hospital were determined as 2.6 km and 6.7 km. Among the reasons for admission per thousand people, infant vaccination, child follow-up, woman follow-up, pregnant follow-up, postpartum follow-up, examination and prescription numbers were 1.7-4.6 times higher in FHC far from hospital. However, patients who applied to the FHC near the hospital applied for health report requests 1.2 times more and for laboratory analysis in 7.3 times more.

Conclusions:

In the FHC, which is far from the hospital, the number of examinations, vaccination, follow-ups and prescriptions were found to be high. In contrast, it was seen that there were more applications for health reports and laboratory analysis to the FHC, which is close to the hospital. It is interesting that the number of applications for laboratory analysis is 7.3 times higher in the FHC, which is close to the hospital, compared to the FHC, which is far away.

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