The consultation proportions were similar between males and females.
Among patients with ID consultations, the proportion of inappropriate prescriptions was 16.5%, indicating a significantly lower rate than among patients without ID consultation.
Student t test, taking the equal variance and unequal sample size into account, was used to analyse differences between groups regarding age, while χ² analysis was used to compare the distributions of education, sex, level of consultation and proportion of patients with neck injury who consulted for different diseases and proportion with work disability.
The estimated mean numbers of HIV-related consultations, average proportions of patients and interventions were adjusted for clustering within the practice and urbanisation.
When the analysis was repeated for practices where data on both curative and preventive services were available (5 practices and 2146 consultations), substantial proportions of patients were found to seek care for immunizations (25%), family planning (12%), and ante-natal care (11%).
The other variables that were significantly associated with lower productivity were: the longer mean duration of a regular consultation and the proportion of long consultations, a higher average income quintile of the patient population, and a higher percentage of females in the physician's patient population.
Consultation prevalence, or the proportion of consultations with a certain condition, is an adequate measure for health care utilization related to different health problems in general practice, for instance when estimating direct costs of MUPS [ 9].
Aside from this apparent stable informal consultation fee, the proportion of patients reporting giving money to the health care provider shows slight variations across the years, with higher proportions in 2008 (62%) and 2011 (49%).
The proportion of consultations with consultants (rather than doctors in training) was 40 and 21% in subjects with breast and testicular cancer, respectively (χ 3.52, 2 sided P=0.07).
In brief, the adjustments were based on the proportion of consultations made in private care and, for patients consulting privately, the likelihood of repeat consultation for the knee injury also to a public health care provider was considered to be low.
A weighted cluster analysis was conducted to determine the prevalence of diarrhea, as well as the proportion of consultations and types of health structures consulted.
