An analysis of referral contents made by family physician was undertaken in Asan Medical Center from Jan to June 1990. All referral letters and charts were reviewed.
1. There were 14,020 patient visits in 6 months, from which 1,424 referrals were made.
So the overall rate of referral was 10.2%.
2. Internal medicine was the most frequently consulted followed by obstetrics and gynecology, orthopaedics, general surgery, neurology, pediatrics.
3. The most frequently consulted problems were hemorrhoids, headache, gall stone, hypertension, disordered stomach function, cough in order of frequency.
4. Relative frequency of referral made by doctors' need was 77.3% and by patients' need was 22.7% of all referrals.
5. Most frequently referred problem by doctors was the need for more sophisticated diagnosis and therapy (50.2%), and most frequent referral request by the patients were for consultation request(16.1%).
6. The overall rate of re-referral to other specialties was 1.5% of all referrals.
