 Heavy users of an emergency department: Psycho-social and medical characteristics, other health care contacts and the effect of a hospital social worker interventionKjerstin Genell Andrén and Urban Rosenqvist Social Science & Medicine, 1985, vol. 21, issue 7, 761-770 Abstract: A small proportion of the patients coming to emergency departments of general hospitals account for a substantial share of the department's resources by making repeated visits. Repeater behaviour is a complex product of many, sometimes concurrent factors. This study has focused on the medical and psycho-social factors. A group of patients with repeated visits to an emergency department of a middle-sized Stockholm hospital was studied in 1980. The repeater group had a heavier load of psycho-social problems than the source population. The repeater behaviour profile included: feeling of loneliness, living alone, contacts with social agency, disability pension, high sick absenteeism from work and alcoholism. The repeater group had numerous contacts with health-care providers outside the emergency department. Some of the repeaters needed and received help by a social hospital worker. Of those that received such help 80% significantly decreased their emergency department visiting rate. Date: 1985 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:21:y:1985:i:7:p:761-770 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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