Use of walk-in clinics by rural and urban patients.

OBJECTIVE To compare use of walk-in clinics by rural and urban family practice patients and to describe patients' perceptions of the quality of care in physicians' offices.

DESIGN Questionnaire completed by patients in family physicians' offices.

SETTING Nine community-based family practices located in rural and urban areas of Alberta.

PARTICIPANTS Patients who had visited their family physicians' offices during April, May, June, or July 1997. Response rate was 89.6% (403 of 450 questionnaires were completed).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Use of walk-in clinics, patients' perceptions of the quality of care in physicians' offices.

RESULTS Overall, 27.5% of patients (22.2% of rural, 35.5% of urban patients) attended walk-in clinics in the 6 months before visiting their family physicians' offices: 43.3% went during weekdays when their family physicians' offices were open. Significantly more rural (91.1%) than urban (60.7%) patients felt they could contact their doctors during evenings and weekends (P.004). Significantly more urban (67.2%) than rural (33.3%) patients did not call their own physicians before going to walk-in clinics (P.002). Patients who attended walk-in clinics were more likely (P.01) than patients who did not to rate their family physicians' office hours poor to good (27.9% vs 15.6%).

CONCLUSIONS Many patients attending the offices of community-based family physicians in both urban and rural areas of Alberta also attend walk-in clinics. Family practice patients attend walk-in clinics primarily because their own physicians' offices are less convenient.