Dealing with sickness certification – a survey of problems and strategies among general practitioners and orthopaedic surgeons

Table 4 Prolonged sickness certification due to waiting times and deficient treatment opportunities

	Orthopaedic surgeons				General practitioners¹				Odds ratio³
	weekly² %	monthly %	yearly %	never %	weekly %	monthly %	yearly %	never %	crude	95% CI	adjusted⁴	95% CI
Within health care
Waiting times for investigation	37.2	25.7	18.2	18.9	29.0	39.8	23.7	7.5	0.7	0.5–1.0	0.7	0.5–1.1
Waiting time for treatment	42.2	27.2	19.7	10.9	28.9	36.1	29.3	5.7	0.6	0.4–0.8	0.6	0.4–0.9
Lack of access to adequate care/care providers	5.4	9.5	19.6	65.5	20.4	35.9	31.5	12.1	4.5	2.2–9.4	5.4	2.3–12.7
Outside health care
Waiting times at Social Insurance Office	19.6	23.6	27.7	29.1	30.1	38.4	24.2	7.4	1.8	1.1–2.7	1.8	1.1–2.8
Wait for measures taken by the employer	6.9	17.9	31.7	43.4	14.5	31.8	32.4	21.3	2.3	1.2–4.5	2.6	1.2–5.6
Waiting times at unemployment office	7.5	18.9	31.8	41.9	12.5	28.1	34.7	24.6	1.8	0.9–3.4	2.0	0.9–4.1

¹ All differences between the physician categories were significant at the 5% level (Chi2 test with four response alternatives)
² The following response alternatives are combined; more than 20 times a week, 6–20 times a week, 1–5 times a week
³ The Odds ratio for dichotomized (weekly vs. less than weekly) response alternatives. Reference group; OS = 1
⁴ Adjusted for gender and working years

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