Does free primary health care access reduce secondary care use in a vulnerable patient group?

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Mental illness; Substance abuse; Social problems; Public Health - Health service research; Mental Health - Other mental health disorders; Mental Health - Addiction

• Registration Number: ACTRN12613000969763
• Lead Sponsor: niversity of Otago

Brief Summary

Not available

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Results First Posted: 1900-01-01
• Study Start: 2013-08-30
• Last Update Posted: 13 January 2020

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 400

Inclusion Criteria

Enrolment at Dunedin's free clinic. A gatekeeping role is performed by the practice manager: criteria for enrolment include possession of a current Community Services Card (CSC, which is means-tested), and a variety of social vulnerability characteristics such as having a mental illness, substance abuse, an imprisonment record, prior child abuse. There is a degree of discretion with regards to the latter. Therefore, enrolment at the free clinic is implicitly associated with both socioeconomic deprivation and social vulnerability.

Exclusion Criteria

Not being resident in Dunedin prior to enrolment at the free clinic. Since there is almost certainly no fully appropriate comparator group, even among patients at Dunedin clinics serving low income catchment neighbourhoods, the primary outcome (secondary care usage) is being compared for free clinic patients pre- and post-enrolment (constituting in essence a before-and-after study). For this reason, study participants need to be resident in Dunedin during the pre-enrolment phase of the study period.

Study & Design

• Study Type: Observational
• Study Design: Not specified