Frequent attendance in primary health care centers: Prevalence, patients characteristics and associated factors

Assistant Professor Department of Public Administration College of Administrative Sciences King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaObjectives: To determine the prevalence of frequent attendance at primary health care (PHC) centres and to determine the variables which may discriminate between frequent and non-frequent users. Methods: The study employed a self-administered questionnaire to collect data from patients aged 18 years or older who visited a PHC centre in Riyadh City. The questionnaire was designed to collect data on a number of variables including socio-demographic, access-related and health-related variables. In addition to the descriptive statistics, stepwise discriminant analysis was used to determine the variables which may discriminate between frequent and non-frequent users. Results: The results show that a small group of patients accounted for a high proportion of the workload in the PHC centre. Results of the stepwise discriminant analysis show that eight of the 16 variables were statistically significant discriminating variables between frequent and non-frequent users. Conclusion: The study highlights the importance of factors which motivate patients to attend PHC centres frequently. Health policy makers should understand these factors before implementing any intervention plans which attempt to persuade people to modify their health-seeking behaviour. Further research is needed to expand this study, and, in particular, to examine the appropriateness of visits made by the frequent users