[Characteristics of those individuals requesting to be seen by a physician without first having made an appointment ahead of time].
BACKGROUND
Waiting time to see a physician is considered to be an indicator of user satisfaction. Non-emergency visits made without an appointment ahead of time result in longer waiting times for the patients who have appointments, resulting in the consequent in satisfaction thereof. The purpose of this study is aimed at conducting a quantitative assessment of this type of visits and at ascertaining the characteristics thereof for the purpose of putting measures into practice for the correction and rationalization thereof.


METHODS
Descriptive study. A record was made which would gather the characteristics of those patients seeing physicians without having made an appointment, such as age, gender and the characteristics related to the visit (reason, modality, working hours and whether made directly or indirectly).


RESULTS
No appointment had been made ahead of time for 14.19% of all non-emergency patient-requested visits. Based on the factorial analysis of multiple correlations, two visit profiles are identified, that is, the direct visits requested by young patients due to illness or red tape at the end of the physician's morning hours, said young patients being present, and the indirect visits during the visits for which appointments have been made ahead of time by patients requesting prescriptions.


CONCLUSIONS
There are a large number of visits for which no appointment has been made ahead of time. Measures must be taken for the purpose of channeling the use of the appointment organization system and of improving those situations involving a lack of accessibility for the end purpose of improving the degree of satisfaction of those using the public health care services.
Isanta Pomar
C
C
Centro de Salud Perpetuo Socorro, Huesca.
Rivera Torres
P
P
Pedraja Iglesias
M
M
Giménez Blasco
N
N
D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009819:Office Visits / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017678:Sex Distribution; D013030:Spain; D013997:Time Factors