Hospitalizations by Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSC) from the General Practitioner/Family Physician’s Point of View

Abstract

Ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC), for example severe cases of asthma, pneumonia and heart failure, force to hospitalizations when not preventing. Those necessary hospitalizations signal health problems which need better ambulatory care, and that can be avoided when care is appropriate. We analyze hospitalizations by ACSC from the general practitioner/family physician point of view, and from his typical adaptation to patients context. As conclusion we recommended its use for group management (for health centres or areas), never for individual doctors, and better in dynamic temporal series. Its careful use might help because signal areas for improvement and health problems needed of better management and better coordination in between health care levels.