[Emergency ambulance call-outs often provide primary care].

Objective: To examine patient and care characteristics of emergency ambulance call-outs and to determine how many of them were, in retrospect, effectively providing primary care.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional study.

Method: We charted patient and care characteristics of 598 emergency ambulance call-outs in the Zuid-Gelderland region in the east of the Netherlands by applying a retrospective dossier analysis method.