Referral notes used as a tool for evaluating the co-operation between general practitioners and hospital physicians.
OBJECTIVE
To study what proportion of clinical visits to a general practitioner working at a Swedish health centre leads to a referral to a specialist, the adequacy of the reason for the referral, the quality of the referral notes, and the quality of the answers by the specialists to whom the patients had been referred.


METHODS
A referee committee representing the different medical specialists and the general practitioners studied all referral notes dealing with internal medicine, surgery, orthopaedics, and otorhinolaryngology during a defined period from two health centres as to adequacy of the reason for referral, the quality of the referral notes, and the quality of the answers to the referrals.


METHODS
Altogether 188 consecutive referral notes and 171 answers to these referrals from two Swedish health centres were evaluated.


RESULTS
Of the visits to a general practitioner, 7-8% resulted in a referral to a hospital specialist, and 90% of these were answered by letter. The referee committee agreed that the vast majority of the reason for referral were adequate, and that the referral notes as well as the answers to these with few exceptions were adequately formulated.


CONCLUSIONS
The referrals from primary health care to different medical specialists worked adequately, but it was concluded that it may be further improved. When evaluating the co-operation between two medical systems, it is important that the evaluation as well is made in co-operation by representatives from the two systems.
Lindström
K
K
Primary Health Care Centre, Habo, Sweden.
Hagman
A
A
Berg
L
L
Bengtsson
C
C
D005194:Family Practice / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008511:Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D012017:Referral and Consultation / Q000592:standards*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013038:Specialization; D013548:Sweden