Impact of the Swine flu pandemic on General Practitioner (GP) visits in Finland: sex and age differences.

Background: Swine flu might serve as a model for challenges that primary care faces during pandemics. This study examined changes in the numbers and diagnoses of general practitioner (GP) visits during and after the Swine flu pandemic in Vantaa, a Finnish city, and how GP activities recovered after the pandemic. Putative sex and age group differences were also evaluated.

Continuity of care and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Background: How continuity of general practitioner care (GP-CoC) affects mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) is unclear.

Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the effect of having no continuity of care (CoC) and GP-CoC on mortality in primary health care (PHC) patients with T2D.

Design & Setting: Cohort study in patients aged 60 years or older with T2D within the public PHC of the city of Vantaa, Finland.

Changes in location and number of nurse consultations as the supply of general practitioners decreases in primary health care: six-year register-based follow-up cohort study in the city of Vantaa, Finland.

Objective: To investigate whether the location and the number of nurse consultations have changed in response to the continuously decreasing number of GP consultations in the fourth-largest city in Finland. It has been suggested that nurse consultations are replacing GP consultations.

Design: A retrospective register-based follow-up cohort study.

Symptomatic diagnoses in primary care: an observational cohort study.

Background: It can be impossible to assign a definitive diagnosis for symptoms reported or observed by primary health care patients. In these situations, symptomatic diagnoses are often used.

Aim: The aim of the present study was to examine the proportion of symptomatic diagnoses among primary health care patients.

Who visits primary health care general practitioners and why? A register-based study in a Finnish city.

This is a register-based study that examines the distribution of diagnoses made by general practitioners (GPs) in the public primary health care of the city of Vantaa, Finland. Data were gathered from the electronic health record (EHR) system and consisted of every record entered into the EHR system between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2018. Both absolute numbers and relative proportions of the 10 edition of International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) diagnosis recordings were reported and calculated.