A named General Practitioner (GP) is associated with an increase of hospital days in a single predictor analysis : a follow-up of 15 years

Background: Continuity of care constitutes the basis of primary health care services and is associated with decreased hospitalization. In Finland, accessibility to primary care and increased use of hospital services are recognized challenges for the health care system. Objectives: The aim of the study was to determine whether having a named GP is associated with hospital service use. Methods: The data are part of the Health and Social Support study (HeSSup) based on a random Finnish working-age population sample. The cohort of the study comprised participants of postal surveys in 1998 (n = 25,898) who returned follow-up questionnaires both in 2003 and 2012 (n = 11,924). Background characteristics were inquired in the questionnaires, and hospitalization was derived from national registries (Hilmo-register). Results: A named GP was reported both in 2003 and 2012 only by 34.3% of the participants. The association between hospital days and a named GP was linearly rising and statistically significant in a single predictor model. The strongest associations with hospital use were with health-related factors, and the association with a named GP was no longer significant in multinomial analysis. Conclusion: A named GP is associated with an increased use of hospital days, but in a multinomial analysis the association disappeared. Health related factors showed the strongest association with hospital days. From the perspective of the on-going Finnish health and social services reform, continuity of care should be emphasized. CC BY 4.0 DEEDCC0 1.0 DEED© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Correspondence Address: E. Lautamatti; Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; email: emmi.lautamatti@tuni.fiOpen access funding provided by Tampere University (including Tampere University Hospital). A personal grant was awarded to the corresponding author by the Foundation of General Practice, General Practitioners in Finland (GPF), Tampere University Hospital, The Finnish Medical Association and The Finnish Medical Foundation (No. 7045).