Primary Care Comprehensiveness Can Reduce Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalization in People with Hypertension in South Korea

Hypertension has been the leading risk factor contributing to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, which needs comprehensive measures to manage and can be controlled effectively in primary care. In the health care context of South Korea, where specialists can see patients directly at their own community clinics and there has been no consensus on the definition of primary care, the authors used the nationally representative 2013 Korea Health Panel data, categorized adults (≥18 years) with hypertension by types of usual source of care (USC), and analyzed the association of having a comprehensive community clinic (i.e., primary care) physician as a USC with experience of emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalization within a year. After adjusting for cofounding variables including Charlson comorbidity index scores, those having a primary care physician as a USC remained associated with a decrease in an experience of ED visits (OR: 0.61, 95% CI: 0.40-0.93) and hospitalization (OR: 0.69, 95% CI: 0.49-0.96), compared to those not having a usual physician. Health policies that promote having a primary care physician as a USC could decrease unnecessary experience of ED visits and hospitalization by adults with hypertension. This can partly reduce ED overcrowding and avoidable hospitalization in Korea.