Introduction:

The family doctor is often the first contact with the health system and must assess the need for referral to secondary health care (SHC). The objective of this study was to evaluate the satisfaction of general practitioners regarding the articulation with SHC.

Material and Methods:

Multicenter, longitudinal study. Participants: general practitioners. Data was collected by completing a questionnaire. The variables were evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, in ascending order of satisfaction, and included: age, sex, professional category, area and place of work, access and quality of the records of hospital consultations, the emergency service, and discharge letter, access to SHC exams, response times and refusal information to referrals, overall satisfaction.

Results: Two hundred and twenty-eight responses were obtained. The average score of responses ranged from 2.2 to 3.6. Overall satisfaction of the joint averaged 2.6±0.74, with 50% of professionals responding ‘reasonable’, with a statistically significant difference according to the area of work.

Discussion:

The results obtained reveal that there is room for improvement in relation to the articulation between primary and secondary care.

Conclusion:

It is crucial to have an efficient articulation between primary and secondary care, to ensure that users have access to the care they need, in the most appropriate place and time. The use of a non-validated questionnaire was used, the small size of the sample, and the fact that did not exist equal representation of the different areas, limits the robustness of the conclusions.

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