Abstract

MACIPE COSTA, R. M. et al. Differences in the use of Primary Care services among native and immigrant children. Rev Pediatr Aten Primaria [online]. 2013, vol.15, n.57, pp.15-25. ISSN 1139-7632.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S1139-76322013000100002.

Introduction: the current study pretends: to analyze the use of Primary Health Care Services by the immigrant population under 15 years of age in comparison to the Spanish population of the same age group; and to analyze differences in the frequentation according to different origins of the immigrant population. Material and methods: this is an observational retrospective study including all consultations of children under 15 years of age to 26 health centers in Zaragoza, Spain, during the year 2007. The main variable, frequentation, was defined as total number of visits/year. Secondary variables were the type of attention that was requested and region of origin of the. The information about the number and type of visits was obtained from the agenda in the electronic data base ("OMI^©: oficina médica informatizada") of the health centers. The frequentation was adjusted according to age and sex. Results: A total of 547,524 pediatric appointments in a population of 71,114 children (of which 10.87% were immigrants) were analyzed. The adjusted annual frequency of visits in autochthonous children was 8.05 while this frequency was 5.66 in immigrant children. Among immigrant children, the highest annual frequentation (6.15) was seen among children from Sub-Saharan Africa and the lowest frequentation (4.02) was seen in children from Asia. This lower frequentation among immigrant children was seen in all types of attention (visits on request, programmed visits, emergency visits and home visits) and was independent of the opening hours of the different health centers (only morning or morning and afternoon). Conclusions: the immigrant children's population shows a lower use of the public primary health care than the autochthonous population of the same age group, independent of the region of origin.

Keywords : Immigrant children; Frequentation; Pediatric Primary Care; Spain.

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