Frequent attenders of Finnish public primary health care: sociodemographic characteristics and physical morbidity

Abstract

In this article results of a Finnish study on frequent attender patients of public primary health care are reported. These patients (n = 96) were compared with other patients (n = 466) attending the same surgeries. Frequent attender patients tended to have lower vocational training and to belong to lower social groups than other patients. The frequent attender patients also had more physical diseases, were more often on disability pension and had more mixed (physical-psychiatric) complaints than the control patients. The results indicate that many frequent attender patients complaints form a complicated network departing from different levels (physical, psychological and social). The implications of the findings are discussed.