There is considerable evidence that an appreciable number of people in Canada, the United States and Great Britain are choosing an ED as their site of primary care, and that this trend is increasing. Profiling Patients Who Use the Emergency Department For Primary Care in a Multicultural Urban Setting was intended systematically investigate who is choosing an ED for primary health care, why they are doing so and what pattern of access to primary health care is occurring and to design and test a transferable tool to do so.
Patients make reasonable choices about where to seek care.
Patient worry and sense of urgency drive the majority of patients to the ER for primary care despite access to other options. Many factors thought to drive ER use were not apparent in this sample. The idiosyncratic nature of each ER population was supported. Patients access primary care in a variety of ways. The population using the PLC ED is less culturally diverse than expected.