Variables
infection, pneumonia
PNEUMONIA, ACUTE BRONCHITIS, ACUTE TONSILLITIS, URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS, ACUTE SINUSITIS, EAR INFECTIONS, INFECTION, SECONDARY, ACUTE LARYNGITIS, INFLUENZA
GP offices and out-of-hours GP cooperatives send electronic compensation claims to the Norwegian Health Economics Administration. The claims contain data on date and type of contact (phone, consultation, or home visit) with GP offices and out-of-hours GP cooperatives as well as age, gender, and diagnosis of the caller/patient. We retrieved these data from the National Directory of Health [We did not have access to the number of nurses working in each out-of-hours cooperative during the intervention. The number of nurses who had just started or completed the e-learning course per 1000 inhabitants in each region was therefore used as a proxy for the proportion of trained nurses in each out-of-hours GP cooperative.The primary outcome was the change in the number of out-of-hours doctor’s consultations for RTIs per 1000 inhabitants in the intervention group versus the control group during the winter months before (December 2018–February 2019) and after (December 2019–February 2020) the intervention. The secondary outcomes per 1000 inhabitants during the same two periods were:the change in the number of list-holding GPs’ consultations for all diagnosesthe change in the number of list-holding GPs’ consultations for RTISthe change in the number of telephone contacts for all diagnoses for list-holding GPsthe change in the number of nurses’ telephone consultations for all diagnoses in the out-of-hours GP cooperativesWe defined RTIs according to the International Classification of Primary Care, 2nd edition, as the following groups: ‘respiratory symptoms’ (R01–05, R08–09, R21 and R23–29), acute tonsillitis (R72 and 76), acute RTIs (R74), acute sinusitis (R75), acute laryngitis (R77), acute bronchitis (R78), influenza infection (R80), pneumonia (R81–82), ‘other RTIs’ (R71, R83 and R99) and ear infections (H01, H29, H70–72 and H74). We also defined the groups urinary tract infections (U01–02, U07, U13 and U70–72), ‘other conditions’ (A03, A76–78), ‘unspecified’ (A99) and ‘all other diagnoses’ (all International Classification of Primary Care codes not included in any of the above-mentioned groups).