Frequent attenders in late life in primary care: a systematic review of European studies

BMC Primary Care

Table 1 Criteria for assessing methodical quality of studies on frequent utilization of primary health care services

Study objective and design
1.	Clearly stated study objectives and hypotheses.
Study population
2.	Study sample is nationally and regionally representative, study sample includes representative sample of elderly individuals.
3.	Sample inclusion and/or exclusion criteria are formulated.
4.	Sociodemographic characteristics of the study sample are described.
5.	Participation and response rates are reported, Participation rate > 75%.
Assessment
6.	Detailed description of methods, procedures and instruments is given.
7.	Stratification (e.g. age, gender) was used to assess frequent attendance.
Data reporting and analysis
8.	Characteristics of responders and non-responders are presented.
9.	Descriptive data (mean or median, standard deviations or percentages) are provided for the most important outcome measures and for different age groups.
10.	Data on frequent attendance among elderly is given.
11.	Precision of estimates is given (e.g. 95% Confidence Intervals).
12.	The handling of missing values is described.
Other
13.	Conflicts of interest reported and identification of funding sources is possible.

Adapted from [33,34,35,36]
Each item is scored as 1 = met the quality criterion, 0 = did not meet the quality criterion or item was not reported or unclear, − not applicable

ISSN: 2731-4553