Personalised care, access, quality and team coordination are the main dimensions of family medicine output.
BACKGROUND
Health organisations continually seek good output indicators of family medicine health care provision because they are accountable to society, they need to compare services, and need to evaluate the impact of organisational reforms.


OBJECTIVE
Using the sources of information routinely available in health-service management, we sought to assess the groups of components of primary health care output that best serve to define the outcome of family medicine services.


METHODS
Cross-sectional descriptive study. SITE: Primary health care in Catalunya.


METHODS
213 primary health care teams.


METHODS
Information was collected on team structure, user satisfaction, quality-of-professional-life of the health care professionals, and physicians' drug prescription. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to assess the number of dimensions that best explained the family medicine outcome.


RESULTS
The model that best fits the structure of the data (AGFI=0.778) is that which consists of three dimensions i.e. (1) the individual accessibility to the services and professional-patient relationship; (2) the coordination within the health care team; (3) the scientific-technical quality of the service. The first two of these dimensions were correlated between themselves, but the third was totally independent of the other two.


CONCLUSIONS
Using sources of information that are routinely employed in primary health care services management, the model enables the measurement of the output of family medicine by considering the dimensions such as inter-personnel relationships, internal coordination of the team and the scientific-technical quality of the service. Despite its simplicity, this measure of the output incorporates the views not only of the users but of the health care professionals, as well.
Gené-Badia
Joan
J
Institut Català de la Salut (ICS), Spain. jgene@clinic.ub.es
Ascaso
Carlos
C
Escaramis-Babiano
Georgia
G
Sampietro-Colom
Laura
L
Catalán-Ramos
Arantxa
A
Sans-Corrales
Mireia
M
Pujol-Ribera
Enriqueta
E
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005194:Family Practice / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000592:standards*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards*; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires