Fig. 1

Graphical summary of the four stages of the decision making process. The arrow in the top of the figure represents the period of complaints preceding the decision to hospitalisation ranging from hours to years and ends in an acute moment for all cases, when the decision moment takes place. In the decision moment, the home situation as a care environment was no longer considered adequate. At the same time, a very positive value was attributed to the hospital. Three parties were involved in this assessment: the patient, his next of kin and the general practitioner. Depending on the assessment of the home situation as a care environment by the three parties, there were four routes to hospitalisation: Referral, Demanding, Shared, Bypassing. Only the category “Shared” was not saturated