[Outpatient clinics. First choice or second choice services?].

Some factors that characterize and influence the use of outpatient clinics at a medium sized somatic hospital have been investigated. The hospital town residents consulted the clinic twice as often as the people in municipalities further away. Self-referred controls constituted from six to 54% of the patients in the different outpatient clinics. The referrals from the primary health care doctors in one of the municipalities served by the hospital constituted only 1/10 of all attendances by people from this area at the outpatient clinics. Patients should be referred back to the primary health service as soon as possible after a critical evaluation of the need for specialist care.