Clustering Complex Chronic Patients: A Cross-Sectional Community Study From the General Practitioner's Perspective.

Objective: Characterize subgroups of Complex Chronic Patients (CCPs) with cluster analysis from the general practitioner's perspective.

Study Design: Cross-sectional population-based study.

Setting: Three Primary Care urban centres for a reference population of 43,647 inhabitants over 14 years old in Sabadell, Catalonia, Spain.

Complex Care Needs in Multiple Chronic Conditions: Population Prevalence and Characterization in Primary Care. A Study Protocol.

Background: Chronicity, and particularly complex care needs for people with chronic diseases is one of the main challenges of health systems.

Objective: To determine the population prevalence of people with chronic diseases and complex care needs and to characterize these needs considering features of health and social complexity in Primary Care.

Design: Cross-sectional population-based study.

Level of distress, somatisation and beliefs on health-disease in newly arrived immigrant patients attended in primary care centres in Catalonia and definition of professional competences for their most effective management: PROMISE Project.

Background: Newly arrived immigrant patients who frequently use primary health care resources have difficulties in verbal communication. Also, they have a system of beliefs related to health and disease that makes difficult for health care professionals to comprehend their reasons for consultation, especially when consulting for somatic manifestations. Consequently, this is an important barrier to achieve optimum care to these groups.

Nursing workload predictors in Catalonia (Spain): a home care cohort study.

Objective: To identify the characteristics of chronic patients and their environment in order to predict the nursing workload required 1 year after their inclusion in a home care program.

Methods: A longitudinal study was carried out in 72 primary health care teams in Catalonia (Spain) with a 1-year follow-up of 1,068 home care patients over 64 years old. The variables collected from each patient included data on health and social status (Charlson and Barthel indexes and the Pfeiffer, Braden and Gijon scales), carer overburden (Zarit scale), hospital admissions, use of emergency services, self-perceived health (SF-12) and the number of health worker visits.

[Health problems also explain social services use in home care].

Objective: To identify which social and health variables are associated with receiving social services in patients included in home care programmes with the implementation of the Dependence Law.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: 72 primary health care teams in Catalonia.

[Monitoring a home care cohort].

Objectives: To evaluate home care by primary care teams for people over 65 years old with chronic conditions, in order to identify improvement opportunities. To identify patient and care variables associated with cognitive and functional impairment, nursing home admission, attendance at casualty units, hospital admission and death.

Design: Analytic study of the follow-up of a cohort for 3 years.