Comparison of reasons for hospital visits before and after name change of outpatient service from “internal medicine” to “general practice”

  • Kurosawa Satoko
    Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Research Center for Medical Science, Jikei University School of Medicine
  • Matsushima Masato
    Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Research Center for Medical Science, Jikei University School of Medicine
  • Miura Yasuhiko
    医療法人財団慈生会野村病院
  • 野村 幸史
    医療法人財団慈生会野村病院

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Other Title
  • 内科外来のうち「初診・予約外外来」を「総合診療外来」へ改称した前後での受診理由の変化
  • ナイカ ガイライ ノ ウチ ショシン ヨヤク ガイ ガイライ オ ソウゴウ シンリョウ ガイライ エ カイショウ シタ ゼンゴ デ ノ ジュシン リユウ ノ ヘンカ

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Abstract

Objective<br> The purpose of this study is to evaluate the differences in the reasons for visits to a Tokyo hospital before and after the changing of the name of the outpatient service from “internal medicine” to “general practice.” <br>Methods<br> The participants in this study were outpatients who visited the internal medicine department from September to October, 2006, and the general practice department from September to October in 2008, for their first medical examination at a hospital in Tokyo. <br>We encoded the reasons for the hospital visits using ICPC-2 (International Classification of Primary Care-2), and counted the number of reasons for each outpatient. <br>Results<br> In the internal medicine service, there were 362 outpatients participants (193 men and 169 women) with an average age of 48.6 years. In the general practice service, the participants consisted of 376 outpatients (206 men and 170 women) with an average age of 50.5 years. The difference between the total number of reasons for visits to the general practice service (1.7 ± 0.9 per visit) and to the internal medicine service (1.5 ± 0.8 per visit) was statistically significant. However, no significant differences were found between the two in terms of the proportion of the frequency for each category of reasons. <br>Conclusion<br> This study found that the changing of the name of the outpatient service from “internal medicine” to “general practice” led to a slight but statistically significant increase in the total number of reasons per visit. However, this change had no effect on the frequency for each category of reasons as a proportion of the total.

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