Morbidity and doctor characteristics only partly explain the substantial healthcare expenditures of frequent attenders: a record linkage study between patient data and reimbursements data

Table 1 Description of the study population in 2009 (by frequent attender-status)

	Non-FA¹	1yFA¹	2yFA¹	3yFA¹
Number of patients	12 814	2540	843	334
Mean age	46 (18) ²	47 (18)	49 (19)	53 (17)
Females, n(%)	7371 (58)	1410 (56)	508 (60)	215 (64)
Ethnicity
Dutch, n(%)	9798 (77)	1872 (74)	603 (72)	235 (70)
Moroccan, n(%)	465 (4)	120 (5)	49 (6)	17 (6)
Turkish, n(%)	280 (2)	66 (3)	24 (3)	12 (4)
Surinamese, n(%)	2262 (18)	480 (19)	167 (20)	70 (21)
Mean number of entries on the problem list in 2009 (SD)³
All problems	1.58 (2.02)	2.43 (2.54)	3.39 (2.82)	4.50 (3.34)
social	0.02 (0.16)	0.04 (0.20)	0.06 (0.26)	0.07 (0.26)
psychological	0.14 (0.40)	0.24 (0.50)	0.35 (0.61)	0.56 (0.76)
depression	0.03 (0.18)	0.06 (0.23)	0.10 (0.30)	0.13 (0.34)
anxiety	0.02 (0.14)	0.03 (0.18)	0.05 (0.23)	0.10 (0.32)
Medically unexplained symptoms	0.09 (0.33)	0.17 (0.45)	0.26 (0.54)	0.36 (0.66)
Diabetes mellitus	0.09 (0.29)	0.14 (0.35)	0.18 (0.39)	0.19 (0.40)
Respiratory diseases	0.13 (0.36)	0.16 (0.40)	0.25 (0.47)	0.30 (0.51)
Cardiovascular diseases	0.27 (0.63)	0.42 (0.74)	0.59 (0.92)	0.66 (0.88)

¹Different frequent attender groups: Patients who never frequently attended during 3 years (non-FAs); patients who attended frequently during 1 year (1yFA), 2 years (2yFA), or 3 years (3yFA).
²Numbers in brackets are standard deviations, unless indicated otherwise.
³Mean number of entries per patient on the problem list. Patient could have more than one (social, cardiovascular, etc.) problem. SD means Standard Deviation.

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