General practice patients starting treatment for substance use problems: observations from two data sources across levels of care

Table 4 New episodes of GP treatment for substance use problems without and with concurrent specialist treatment, SGP surveillance, Belgium 2016–7 (N = 305)^a

	GP treatment only (no concurrent treatment) n = 220		Concurrent specialist treatment n = 85		Adjusted OR (95% CI) for GP treatment only (n = 259)
	n/N	% (95% CI)	n/N	% (95% CI)	Adjusted OR (95% CI) for GP treatment only (n = 259)
Recently employed	113/207	54.6 (47.5–61.5)	18/76	23.7 (14.7–34.8)	2.58 (1.36–4.91)
First treatment	91/198	46.0 (38.9–53.2)	13/79	16.5 (9.1–26.5)	2.78 (1.39–5.55)
Type of substance use
Street drugs minus cannabis primarily (III-b)	37/220	16.8 (12.1–22.4)	23/85	27.1 (18.0–37.8)	Removed ^c
Mono substance use	188/220	85.5 (80.1–89.8)	60/85	70.6 (59.7–80.0)	Removed ^c
Recent use of primary substance	187/191	97.9 (94.7–99.4)	54/61	88.5 (77.8–95.3)	Not included ^b
Region
Flemish	126/220	57.3 (50.4–63.9)	64/85	75.3 (64.7–84.0)	Reference
Walloon	65/220	29.5 (23.6–36.0)	16/85	18.8 (11.2–28.8)	1.97 (1.06–3.66)
Brussels	29/220	13.2 (9.0–18.4)	5/85	5.9 (1.9–1.3)	1.97 (1.06–3.66)

Sex, age and age of first use of primary substance were not significantly associated at the univariate level with receiving concurrent specialist treatment or not
Non-overlapping confidence intervals are in bold
^a For 9 of 314 patients it was unknown whether they were receiving concurrent specialist treatment
^b Recent use of primary substance was not included in the initial multivariate logistic model due to the small number of positive cases
^c Variable was removed because it did not significantly improved the fit of the model

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