patient referral, theory of planned behaviour, structural equation modelling, county medical consortium, China, Public aspects of medicine, RA1-1270

IntroductionTo promote patients’ referral across healthcare institutions and integrated care delivery, we identified predictors of physicians’ behaviour and intention to refer patients in a county medical consortium in China on the basis of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).MethodsThis census-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Yangxi Hospital Group (YHG). All physicians in county hospitals and township health centres were invited to participate. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the relationships between referral intention and behaviour and other TPB variables in the group of whole participants and in sub-groups.ResultsIn total, 330 physicians participated in this study. One-third of participants were general practitioners, and half of them were from county hospitals. Referral behaviour of females (χ2 = 20.372, p