Table 2.

Principal characteristics of strata of patients based on frequent use of health services

Patient characteristics	Non frequent HS users (N.927)	Frequent HS users (N.1098)	Total
Gender (%) (p < 0.05) among users
Male	51.9	44.2	47.7
Female	48.1	55.8	52.3
Age group (%) (p < 0.05) among users
18–45 y	41.0	34.2	37.3
46–65 y	33.8	33.6	33.7
65+ y	25.2	32.2	29.0
Education (%)
Low (primary)	19.3	20.6	20.0
Medium (secondary)	29.9	26.8	28.2
High (high school, degree)	50.8	52.6	51.8
Self-reported health status (%) (p < 0.01) among users
Bad	6.1	16.8	11.9
Fair	43.0	50.2	46.9
Good	50.9	33.0	41.2
Self-reported chronicity (%) (p < 0.01) among users
No	81.1	56.6	67.8
Yes	18.9	43.4	32.2
Frequency of visits to GP in the last year (%) (p < 0.01) among users
Never	5.9	3.3	4.5
Rarely (1–4 times/year)	68.0	47.4	56.9
Sometimes (at least 5 times/year)	26.1	49.3	38.6
Often (at least once/month)	0.0	0.0	0.0
Main reason for visit to GP (%) (p < 0.05) among users
Administrative (prescription. certificate)	51.4	56.7	54.3
Health reason	48.7	43.3	45.7
Co-location of GP in primary care centres (%)
Yes	36.1	38.4	37.4
No	63.9	61.6	62.6
Experience of multidisciplinary team (%)
Yes	18.9	21.6	20.4
No	81.1	78.4	79.6
Co-location of multidisciplinary team in primary care centres (%)
Patients of GP within PCC with experience of multidisciplinary team	8.4	10.0	9.2
Patients of GP within PCC without experience of multidisciplinary team	27.7	28.4	28.1
Patients of GP not in PCC with other experience of multidisciplinary team	10.5	11.6	11.1
Patients of GP not in PCC without any experience of multidisciplinary team	53.4	50.0	51.5
Satisfaction – overall care evaluation (score) (%)	84.4	83.7	84.0