The opinion of private family practitioners on the family doctor registration program and it's major services

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Recently, many countries including Korea have been trying to enforce and reform their primary care system. The Family Doctor Registration Program(FDRP) which Korean government had tried and failed in 1996 continuously has been being highlighted because of it's importance. Several private family practitioners started grass root movement for conducting FDRP voluntarily. This survey aimed to know the willingness for private family practitioners to participate in voluntary FDRP and it's major services. METHODS: By mailing, the self administered questionnaires were collected two times during May 20 to June 30 in 1998. The questionnaire contained followings:demographic and practice related factors, willingness to participate FDRP, factors related to it's major services. Subjects were 496 private family physicians who had acquired the certification since 1989. Analyses were made by the Chi square test, t test, and multiple logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Though overall response rate was only 44.8%(222/496), but age and sex distributions of respondents were similar to those of the total study subjects. The percentage of those having a willingness to participate in voluntary FDRP('Y' group) was 58.6%. The 'Y' group showed phone counselling frequency of 3.2(+/-2.6) times per day. They had much more home visiting experience than 'N' group(62.2% vs 44.9%, P=0.019). After the conduction of FDRP, the frequency of possible night time phone duty per month was 3.5(+/-2.6) times, and the frequency of possible home visiting per week was 1.9(+/-1.4) times in 'Y' group. After multiple logistic regression analysis on the meaningful variables, male(OR=2.25, P=0.0270) rather than female, percentage of child patients60%, and having home visiting experience(OR=1.8, P=0.1131) rather than no experience showed relatively higher tendency of participation in voluntary FDRP. CONCLUSION: The results of this survey should be reflected into the health care policy when retrying to implement FDRP in Korea.