Professionals' perception of circuits of care for hypertensive or diabetic patients between primary and secondary care.

Objective: To determine the flow of care for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and hypertension between primary care (PC) and specialized care (SC) in clinical practice, and the criteria used for referral and follow-up within the Spanish National Health System (NHS).

Design: A descriptive, cross-sectional, multicenter study.

Placement: A probability convenience sampling stratified by number of physicians participating in each Spanish autonomous community was performed. Nine hundred and ninety-nine physicians were surveyed, of whom 78.1% (n=780) were primary care physicians (PCPs), while 11.9% (n=119) and 10.0% (n=100) respectively were specialists in hypertension and diabetes. KEY MEASUREMENTS: was conducted using two self administered online surveys.

Results: A majority of PCPs (63.7% and 55.5%) and specialists (79.8% and 45.0%) reported the lack of a protocol to coordinate the primary and specialized settings for both hypertension and T2DM respectively. The most widely used method for communication between specialists was the referral sheet (94.6% in PC and 92.4% in SC). The main reasons for referral to a specialist were refractory hypertension (80.9%) and suspected secondary hypertension (75.6%) in hypertensive patients, and suspicion of a specific diabetes (71.9%) and pregnancy (71.7%) in T2DM patients.

Conclusions: Although results showed some common characteristics between PCPs and specialists in disease management procedures, the main finding was a poor coordination between PC and SC.