Survey on awareness and utilization of community family doctors' service on residents in Beijing and influential factors

Objective To investigate the awareness and utilization of community family doctor services of residents in Beijing and analyze its influential factors. Methods Multistage random sampling was adopted to enroll residents in Beijing from eight community health centers in Haidian District, Xicheng District and Daxing District, to investigate the awareness and utilization of community family doctor services.Customized questionnaires were recovered for descriptive statistics and influential factor analysis. Results All the 3 008 effective questionnaires were recovered.The results found that 92.2% of the residents used community family doctor services.Higher utilization rates of community family doctor services was found among those residents of chronic diseases, those with their family's annual average outpatient expenses in the medium level, those with their first choice of medical visits in the community health centers, and those who are aware of family doctor service.Services of the most frequent use in the recent year were physical examination and follow-up phone call(87.3% and 73.4% respectively); those of lower frequency were door-to-door service, health assessment, preventive health care, physical examination, health education and consulting, and rehabilitation service.Factors of statistical significance on utilization of community health services were health condition, financial condition and awareness of community family doctor service(P<0.05). Conclusions Residents in Beijing have a high awareness and utilization of community family doctor services, yet some items of services are seldom used.Health condition, financial condition and awareness of community family doctor service are major influential factors for utilization of community health services. Key words: Family doctor service; Awareness; Utilization; Influential factor