Objective: To analyse how often elderly people attend Primary Care (PC) consulting rooms and how attendance is affected by the number and kind of chronic pathologies those elderly people suffer.
Setting: A medical list from each of three Health Centres in the city of Granada was chosen.
Patients: All those over 65 registered on these lists from 1990 to 1994 inclusive, 711 people in total, were included. The number of attendances and chronic illnesses were obtained from the Clinical Records. The outcome variable "Mean Annual Consultations" (MAC) over the study period was analysed by ANOVA and multiple linear regression.
Results: MAC was 5.79 (SD 4.20), with a range from 0 to 27 consultations. MACs were significantly higher among the elderly registered at the Doctors' Health Centre (p < 0.001), among women (p < 0.05) and for the presence of any of the pathologies under consideration (p < 0.01) except dementia. A relationship was found between the number of comorbidities and MAC (p < 0.001). In the scaled multiple regression analysis, the number of comorbidities, the first variable introduced into the model, explained 33% of variability in use.
Conclusions: The number of chronic pathologies strongly determines elderly people's attendance at PC consulting rooms, independently of the kind of illness they suffer from.