Paediatric attendances of the emergency department in a major Irish tertiary referral centre before and after expansion of free GP care to children under 6: a retrospective observational study.

Objectives: To examine the characteristics of paediatric attendances to the emergency department (ED) in Cork University Hospital (CUH) before and after the expansion of free general practitioner (GP) care to children under the age of 6 years.

Design: This is a retrospective observational study that used a large administrative dataset.

Setting: The study was conducted in major Irish tertiary referral centre that serves a total population of over 1.