ROLE OF THE OCCUPATIONAL-HEALTH SERVICES AS A PART OF ILLNESS-RELATEDPRIMARY-CARE IN FINLAND

The aim of the study was to evaluate the employees' illness-related ut ilization of physicians' services in Finland with special reference to Occupational Health Services (OHS). The data are based on a national health-survey conducted by a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CA TI) in autumn 1991. There were 1,856 people aged 25-64 interviewed. Th e ''risk'' of having visited a physician in six months was in associat ion with perceived chronic illness and gender. Half of those employees who were covered by OHS (90% of all) usually visited their OHS unit f or health problems. The potential use of the OHS unit depended on the OHS model. The study shows that the Finnish employees use OHS units fo r physicians' services a lot and this might have implications in the p lanned reorganization of the Finnish primary care to the so-called pop ulation responsibility-based system.