Ecology of Medical Care - Utilisation of Health Care in Austria (ECOHCARE)

• Prevalence of health complaints [ Time Frame: 1 month ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  The occurrence of any health complaint and the subsequent help seeking behaviour with special emphasis on under-served minority groups.
• Prevalence of dysphoric disorders [ Time Frame: 2 weeks ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  The prevalence of depression and GAD will be assessed by the PHQ-2 and GAD-2 respectively.

• Utilization of CAM [ Time Frame: 1 month ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  The utilization of CAM and a classification scheme for CAM methods in Austria.
• Utilization of Health Care Resources in Austria [ Time Frame: 1 month ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  The utilization of health care resources of the Austrian population with respect to Primary, Secondary and Tertiary levels of care.
• Case vignettes for calibration of response measures [ Time Frame: 1 month ] [ Designated as safety issue: Yes ]
  The use of case vignettes to calibrate response measures across various ethnic minority groups.

BACKGROUND: A proper understanding of the attitudes towards its own health status and concise estimates concerning the health seeking behavior of the different subgroups of a population are highly desirable. The structure of the Austrian population with regard to its age distribution and the proportion of people with immigrant backgrounds have been rapidly changing in recent years. Questions of allocating limited resources and meeting the needs of under-served populations have become increasingly important. However, data that could illuminate these issues are sparse and therefore obtaining them will be important for making sensible policy decisions.

METHODS: A telephone survey of the Austrian population for the assessment of the occurrence of any health complaint and the subsequent help seeking behavior with special emphasize on under-served minority groups - migrant population, elder people, and female gender.

AIMS: Our analysis of the data obtained should help to clarify some hitherto undocumented aspects and should provide the evidence for building a better health care infrastructure with equality of access and efficient coordination. We also hope that this information can help to allocate resources strategically according to needs and cost-efficiency in health care.

The Austrian population 15 years and older .

Inclusion Criteria:

• 15 years and older

Exclusion Criteria:

• younger than 15 years