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Objective: To evaluate the technical efficiency of primary care units operating in the Basque Health Service during the period 2010-2013, corresponding to the implementation of a care integration strategy by health authorities., Methods: This study included 11 of the 12 primary care units in the Basque Health Service during the period 2010-2013. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to assess the technical efficiency of the units. In particular, we applied the extension DEA windows to analyse all units as if they were in a single period (33 observations) as well as a conditional model, which allowed incorporation of the effect of the characteristics of the population covered. The outputs considered were a quality index based on fulfilment of different requirements related to primary care delivery and the rate of avoidable hospitalizations (treated as an undesirable output). The inputs used were the number of physicians, the number of nurses and the costs of prescriptions. The morbidity index was included as an exogenous variable., Results: The results showed that the efficiency of all the units improved during the study period. However, this improvement was not greater in the units incorporated in the integrated healthcare organisation., Discussion: In a context of global transformation of care delivery in the Basque country in the study period, primary care units increased their efficiency. However, this effect was not larger in vertically integrated primary care providers., (Copyright © 2015 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: To determine the completeness and accuracy of ICD-9-CM codes allocated by primary health care physicians in their computerized medical records and evaluate the effects of improvement procedures., Methods: The codes of 87,806 patients assigned to 56 primary care physicians in the Basque National Health Service in Spain, were evaluated 3 times over a 1-year period according to the following criteria: correspondence to a valid ICD-9-CM code, agreement between diagnosis and code, and the percentage of visits with an unspecified reason for consultation. Finally, the mean number of unique diagnoses and rates of diagnostic groups in the 84,136 patients that remained with the same physician for a minimum of 6 months were contrasted with another previously registered morbidity database. Two interventions were performed to improve coding: detected errors were corrected centrally and physicians were assessed and given information on their individual results., Results: Diagnoses lacking an ICD-9-DIC code decreased from 59% in the first assessment to 2% at the end of the study period. The percentage of coding mistakes (discrepancies in episode diagnosis and ICD-9-CM code) decreased from 17% to 3%. The mean annual number of diagnoses per patient was slightly lower than that in the reference database (2.26 versus 2.43). The same result was observed in the rates of some diagnostic groups., Conclusions: Primary care doctors can achieve a high degree of quality in ICD-9-CM diagnosis coding. Implementing procedures for evaluating coding, rectifying mistakes, and providing information to physicians markedly improved the initial results.

Objectives: To analyze the relationship between pediatric patients morbidity and their level of primary health care services use; and to establish if the patients level of use affects the health promotion and immunization schedule completion., Methods: All patients assigned to a pediatric practice of the Basque National Health Service in Astrabudua (Bizkaia, Spain) over a 6-year period were categorized into different utilization patterns according to their age and number of primary care visits (whose principal reason for encounter was different from health promotion activities). Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed comparing three groups of subjects: 116 consistently high users, 115 consistently low users and 123 patients classified as consistently medium or erratic users. Ambulatory care Groups (ACGs) case-mix system was used to manage pathologies., Results: High use patients experienced several morbidity types most frequently than low use ones: asthma (OR = 44.7; 95% CI = 5.5-206.1), diseases likely to recurr (OR = 33.5; 95% CI = 8.5-131.6), specialty unstable chronic conditions (OR = 10.8; 95% CI = 2.2-52.8), psychosocial conditions (OR = 5.7; 95% CI = 2.1-15.2), chronic medical stable conditions (OR = 4.0; 95% CI = 1.9-8.6), eye/dental diseases (OR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.5-8.1). On the other hand, low users were more likely to be lacking completion of the immunization (OR = 3.0; 95% CI = 1.1-8.8) and the well-child care program visits schedules (OR = 4.3; 95% CI = 2.3-8.0)., Conclusion: Our data confirm that high utilization, far from being inadequate behavior, is an adequate response to the higher health care needs showed by such patients. Primary care pediatricians should assess preventive care needs of the children who consult them infrequently.