Spanish Health Care Utilization
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| 1. ¿Cuántas veces ha visitado al médico durante los últimos 6 meses? (Si estuvo en el hospital, no incluya estas visitas.) Por favor llene con "0" u otro número. | ____ veces |
| 2. Cuántas veces visitó la sala de emergencia en los últimos 6 meses? (No incluya visitas a clínicas de atención inmediata.) Por favor llene con "0" u otro número. | ____ veces |
| 3. ¿En cuántas diferentes ocasiones ha estado hospitalizado, por una noche o más, en los últimos 4 meses? Por favor llene con "0" u otro número. | ____ veces |
| 4. ¿Cuántas noches en total estuvo hospitalizado, toda la noche, en los últimos 6 meses? Por favor llene con "0" u otro número. | ____ noches |
Scoring
These are single items. We have found that we often have to follow up with telephone clarification for these items, no matter how they are written. You will need to figure out how stringent you want to be in your own research. For example, do you want to count an ER visit that resulted in an in-patient admission? Do you want to distinguish between acute and SNF nights in hospital (patients often can't distinguish)? Do you want to clarify whether the physician visits include infusions, allergy shots, dialysis, or diagnostic tests?
Characteristics
Tested on 317 Spanish-speaking subjects.
Item |
items |
Range |
Mean |
Deviation |
Reliability |
Reliability |
| Physician visits | ||||||
| Visits to emergency dept | ||||||
| Times hospitalized | ||||||
| Nights in hospital |
Source of Psychometric Data
Spanish speaking diabetics in the Stanford/El Paso Border Diabetes Project. Report for publication in process.
Comments
There is no perfect way to get self-reported utilization data-do not try for a time period of more than six months. The article below discusses the validity of these questions.
References
Ritter PL, Kaymaz H, Stewart A, Sobel DS, Lorig KR, Self-reports of health care utilization compared to provider records. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2001, 54, pp.136-141.
English versions are described in: Lorig K, Stewart A, Ritter P, González V, Laurent D, & Lynch J, Outcome Measures for Health Education and other Health Care Interventions. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 1996, pp.25,52-53.
To download this scale and scoring instructions, right click the link below with your mouse and "Save as" to you hard disk or desktop (for Windows), or double click (Mac):