Disease profile of inpatients in general practice department of a Grade A tertiary hospital

Abstract

Objective To analyze the disease profile of inpatients from general practice department in a Grade A tertiary hospital. Methods Information of 3 963 inpatients admitted in general practice department of the Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University from November 2013 to March 2016 was retrospectively analyzed. Results Inpatients were admitted from emergency department(10.8%), specialist departments(2.9%) or general practice department(80.3%). The most frequent diagnosis was headache, dizziness or syncope of unknown origin (29.3%), followed by fever of unknown origin (22.4%), cerebrovascular diseases (7.5%). Undifferentiated diseases accounted for 84.2% of all conditions; the diagnostic categories included common diseases, multiple diseases and chronic diseases of all systems. In the discharged patients, 10.9% had one single diagnosis, 23.6% had one comorbidity of chronic diseases, the remaining had two and more comorbidities of chronic diseases. Most inpatients of general practice department were discharged with improvement or cure; the other outcomes included transferred to specialist departments(6.1%), referred to higher level hospitals(2.8%), auto-discharge (0.9%) and death (0.1%). Conclusions The disease profile of inpatients in department of general practice in Grade A hospital includes undifferentiated disease, common diseases, frequently encountered diseases and chronic diseases of all systems, multiple diseases are common, which is similar with the disease profile of community health service center. It's suggesting that general practice department in Grade A tertiary hospital can make up for the shortage of specialist departments and meet the basic medical needs of patients. Key words: Hospitals, general; Inpatients; General practice; Disease spectrum