ABSTRACT
Background: Hospital admission data can be a valuable tool for assessing the epidemiology of diseases within populations. With a minimum amount of data collection, substantial insight can be had into the types of diseases, the age at which conditions present, and their burden on inpatient service. And although these data are inevitably referral and access biased, they can provide useful information on morbidity in the community. Little is known about the surgical and medical diseases burden in tertiary care hospitals in Pakistan. Incomplete information has made it difficult to define an appropriate role for tertiary health care hospitals and the objectives of this research is to determine the referral profile of patients who are attending medical and allied OPD in Jinnah Hospital Lahore and compare disease burden from local and peripheral areas in surgical and medical units of Jinnah Hospital Lahore
Methods: Cross sectional study in medical and surgical wards of Jinnah Hospital, Lahore
Results: In our study, it was found that public Tertiary Care Hospitals, such as Jinnah Hospital Lahore, has much more patients referred to it from rural cities compared to urban population with a referral burden of 63.01% subjects from rural areas or outside city versus 36.99% subjects belonging from urban areas or within city. Many of these patients, 35.6%, obtaining this facility equipped with all modalities in single setting belonged to poor socio economic status. 72.6% had a total family income of < Rs.20, 000/- per month. And the interesting fact causing the demise of Health Care Facility system is that 72% of the subjects were self-referred without any referral profile and diverting burden of Primary and Secondary Health Care facilities on the Tertiary Health Care setup
Conclusion: The disease burden from peripheral/rural areas is far greater than local/urban areas in surgical and medical units of Jinnah Hospital Lahore, and the most of the subjects are self-referred