%0 Journal Article %T Impact of immigration on the cost of emergency visits in Barcelona (Spain) %A Francesc Cots %A Xavier Castells %A Oscar Garc¨Şa %A Marta Riu %A Aida Felipe %A Oriol Vall %J BMC Health Services Research %D 2007 %I BioMed Central %R 10.1186/1472-6963-7-9 %X Emergency visits to Hospital del Mar in Barcelona in 2002 and 2003 were analysed. The country of origin, gender, age, discharge-related circumstances (hospital admission, discharge to home, or death), medical specialty, and variable cost related to medical care were registered. Immigrants were grouped into those from high-income countries (IHIC) and those from low-income countries (ILIC) and the average direct cost was compared by country of origin. A multivariate linear mixed model of direct costs was adjusted by country of origin (classified in five groups) and by the individual variables of age, gender, hospital admission, and death as a cause of discharge. Medical specialty was considered as a random effect.With the exception of gynaecological emergency visits, costs resulting from emergency visits by both groups of immigrants were lower than those due to visits by the Spanish-born population. This effect was especially marked for emergency visits by adults.Immigrants tend to use the emergency department in preference to other health services. No differences were found between IHIC and ILIC, suggesting that this result was due to the ease of access to emergency services and to lack of knowledge about the country's health system rather than to poor health status resulting from immigrants' socioeconomic position. The use of costs as a variable of complexity represents an opportunistic use of a highly exhaustive registry, which is becoming ever more frequent in hospitals and which overcomes the lack of clinical information related to outpatient activity.Several studies support the idea that immigrants make greater use of emergency services than other healthcare modalities and that the reasons for this phenomenon are diverse. Firstly, emergency care in Spain is public, free and universal, independently of nationality and length of residence [1]. In addition, primary and specialised care present several barriers to immigrants without papers [2-4]. Secondly, emergency %U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/7/9