United, can we be stronger? Did French general practitioners in multi-professional groups provide more chronic care follow-up during lockdown?
BMC Health Serv Res
; 22(1): 519, 2022 Apr 19.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1793941
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Given the importance of the continuous follow-up of chronic patients, we evaluated the performance of French private practice general practitioners (GPs) practicing in multi-professional group practices (MGP) regarding chronic care management during the first Covid-19 lockdown in Spring 2020 compared to GPs not in MGP. We consider twooutcomes:
continuity of care provision for chronic patients and proactivity in contacting these patients.METHODS:
The cross-sectional web questionnaire of 1191 GPs took place in April 2020. We exploit self-reported data on 1) the frequency of consultations for chronic patients during lockdown compared to their "typical" week before the pandemic, along with 2) GPs' proactive behaviour when contacting their chronic patients. We use probit and bivariate probit models (adjusted for endogeneity of choice of engagement in MGP) to test whether GPs in MGP had significantly different responses to the Covid-19 crisis compared to those practicing outside MGP.RESULTS:
Out of 1191 participants (response rate 43.1%), around 40% of GPs were female and 34% were younger than 50 years old. Regression results indicate that GPs in MGP were less likely to experience a drop in consultations related to complications of chronic diseases (- 45.3%). They were also more proactive (+ 13.4%) in contacting their chronic patients compared to their peers practicing outside MGP.CONCLUSION:
We demonstrate that the MGP organisational formula was beneficial to the follow-up of patients with chronic conditions during the lockdown; therefore, it appears beneficial to expand integrated practices, since they perform better when facing a major shock. Further research is needed to confirm the efficiency of these integrated practices outside the particular pandemic setup.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
General Practitioners
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Language:
English
Journal:
BMC Health Serv Res
Journal subject:
Health Services Research
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S12913-022-07937-z
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