Healthcare Utilisation in Danish Primary Care Among Patients With Low Back or Neck/Thoracic Spine Pain Before and After Assessment in Secondary Care

ABSTRACT Objectives To describe characteristics and primary healthcare utilisation in Danish patients with low back pain (LBP) or neck/thoracic spine pain (NTP) 8 years before and 2 years after assessment in secondary care. Methods In this cohort study, we included patients aged ≥ 18 who were assessed at an outpatient spine clinic from 2013 to 2021 and linked self‐reported information with national registry data. We calculated the prevalence of all‐cause healthcare utilisation in primary care. Then, we determined changes in the number of consultations from before to after assessment in secondary care using generalised estimating equations. Results We included 56,949 LBP patients and 18,926 NTP patients. The baseline characteristics were similar overall. For both LBP and NTP, all‐cause healthcare utilisation increased slightly over time, with a substantial increase in the quarter before the secondary care assessment and a decrease after. Before the assessment, almost all patients consulted general practitioners (95%), while some consulted physiotherapists or chiropractors (60%). Overall, consultations decreased by 19% and 17% for patients with LBP and NTP from 12 to 1 month before to 1–12 months after the assessment. In contrast, 13–24 months after assessment, we found a slight increase in consultations in both groups compared to the same period before. Conclusions Patients with LBP and NTP were similar and used similar primary healthcare, which slightly increased over the 10 years. As physiotherapists and chiropractors are first‐line providers of guideline‐recommended spine pain treatment, the finding that 40% did not consult these professions the year before the secondary care assessment indicates that not all patients receive recommended care before referral.