Statistics from primary health care in Sweden, as well as from other Nordic countries, have been sparse. The electronic patient records (EPR) will be an increasingly important source of clinical information. The aim of this study was to investigate types of encounters, managed diseases and health problems, and characteristics of patients and general practitioners (GPs) in everyday general practice using EPR.

A multi-centre, cross-sectional database study of EPR in primary health care in Stockholm, Sweden. Twenty-six randomly selected GPs with 20 randomly selected encounters each. Main outcome measures were the number and distribution of diseases and health problems, age and gender of patients and GPs, and type of encounter.

The mean age of the patients was 51.2 years, 30.2% were aged 75 years or older, and 57.5% were women. The mean number of managed problems per encounter was 1.4. The most common specific diagnoses were essential hypertension (9.3% of the encounters) and acute upper respiratory infections (8.8%). Older patients had more health problems in each encounter (P = 0.000001). GPs differed regarding the characteristics of their patients, including sex, age and number of health problems managed at each encounter. The patients of different GPs differed regarding sex, age and number of health problems managed. Female and male patients had different diagnostic panoramas and they had a tendency to encounter a GP of the same sex (odds ratio 1.5, P = 0.053).

We found that two diagnoses (essential hypertension and acute upper respiratory infections), four diagnostic groups, women and the elderly are predominant. Female and male patients have different diagnostic panoramas and they have a tendency to encounter a GP of the same sex. GPs differ regarding the characteristics of their patients, including sex, age and number of health problems managed at each encounter.