Objective: To explore general practitioners' knowledge of their patients' socioeconomic data and their ability to identify vulnerable groups.
Design: A multipractice survey of consecutive adult patients consulting general practitioners during one regular workday. Doctors and patients independently completed mirrored questionnaires.
Setting: A geographically defined population of patients and doctors in Buskerud county, Norway.
Subjects: 1401 patients attending 89 general practitioners during the last two weeks of March 1995.
Main outcome measures: The doctors' ability to state the patients' socioeconomic situation correctly using sensitivity and specificity. Results for patients scarcely and well known to the doctors are compared.
Results: Sensitivity ranged from 0.93 for work as main income source to 0.04 for not having WC/bathroom inside the dwelling. Specificity ranged from 1.00 for several factors to 0.73 for low educational level. Information on household composition and income source was correct for more than half of patients scarcely known to the doctors.
Conclusions: General practitioners' knowledge of various socioeconomic data of their patients differs substantially and are collected at different stages in the relationship. Among socioeconomic data defining vulnerable groups, the patients' self-perceived work disability is the variable general practitioners are best at evaluating.