Abstract

OBJECTIVES:

estimation of risk adjustment models based on administrative databases in order to describe the quality of care provided by General Practitioners in an ASL of the Veneto region. Particularly, it was tested whether some variables (routinely available) can describe the severity of casemix and the value of the "ticket exemption" database.

METHODS:

the main administrative databases of the ASL were linked through the unique personal health identifier and analyzed by means of multivariate techniques, using the tariff as the dependent variable; the explanatory ones are a number of variables describing health conditions.

RESULTS:

ticket exemptions, assumed as estimator of health conditions, resulted quite reliable in predicting costs, often better than the traditional sex and age. Further, for some activities, as for instance hospitalization, they almost completely explain variability among general practitioners.

CONCLUSION:

ticket exemptions can be considered good estimators of the prevalence of some conditions in the general population and very good predictors of the use of health resources. They could be easily improved in this respect introducing slight modifications. Data show a good level of appropriateness in the use of hospital resources by general practitioners.