Are there treatment variations in triage outcomes across out-of-hours co-ops?
BACKGROUND
This study considers the factors that affect service provision for individuals who present to out-of-hours (OOH) primary care services in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The organisations under consideration are known as OOH co-ops. Specifically, an individual can potentially receive one of four services: nurse advice, doctor advice, a treatment centre consultation or a home visit.


OBJECTIVE
The principal aim was to investigate whether service provision was consistent across co-ops once patient characteristics, patient complaints and other covariates were controlled for. In this paper, service provision was seen as a necessary but not sufficient condition for quality.


METHODS
A multinomial logit approach was used to model the choice between the three services offered by co-ops.


RESULTS
The results indicate that service provision was relatively homogenous across co-ops.


CONCLUSIONS
Quality was consistent across co-ops in terms of service provision. Therefore the next step is to consider whether quality within the treatment received varies. Nevertheless, the result provides some support for using OOH co-ops as a means to provide OOH primary care.
Lordan
Grace
G
School of Economics, Colin Clark Building, University of Queensland, Saint Lucia Campus, QLD 4072, Australia. g.lordan@uq.edu.au
D039602:After-Hours Care; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D007494:Ireland; D016015:Logistic Models; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009660:Northern Ireland; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D014218:Triage