A STUDY ON THE REFERRAL PROGRAM FROM PRIMARY HEALTH CARE FACILITIES IN A RURAL AREA

일부 농촌지역의 의뢰환자 프로그램 운영에 관한 연구

This study was conducted to follow the patient referral system operated from the primary health care facilities to the hospital in a rural area of Korea. The subject for this study was sampled from a community health development project carried out by the Korea University in Yeoju Kun, Kyonggi Province. The data of referred patients from primary health care facilities were collected during the period from January 1989 to December 1989. The data was sorted out by a computer system using Database package. The results of this study were summarized as follows: 1. Characteristics of the referred patients were: males $32.0\%$. and females $68.0\%$. The more elderly of the patients visited to the hospital after having been referred there by CHPs or public physicians, $25.9\%$ has been to hospital on at least one previous occasion as against $74.1\%$ for whom it was there first visit. 2. The majority of patients who were referred to a hospital where: medicine $44.3\%$ and orthopedics$16.4\%$, major diseases were : diseases of digestive system $(21.3\%)$ ; symptoms and ill defined conditions $(17.3\%)$ ; diseases of the muscular skeletal system and connective tissue$(14.2\%)$. chronic illness was $82.0\%$ and acute illlness was $18.0\%$. 3. From Community health practitioners more patients referred than the public physicians. Categoris of diseases of the referred patients were different between community health practitioners and public physicians. Due to the. respective differences between the medical restrictions put on the nursing staffs at the community health practitioners and public physicians. From this study it was recommended to define the reason of differences between ~he two groups in futher study. Study as to 1) why one group should be referring more for hospital treatment than the other. And 2) why the two agencies should be referring different diseases.