Objectives. Determining disease entities and the direct medical costs connected with the care of patients with chronic illness in the primary care. Material and method. The analysis was based on data from providers from Opole province providing services on the base of the contract with the Opole Department of the regional national Health Fund in 2009. The authors selected patients who went to an outpatient specialist care facility or hospital for services in 2006-2009. Results. The examined group included 125,023 patients, average age was 60.37 years. Primary care facilities provided services for 125,023 persons (of 1,223,872 services = 9.8 service per capita) to cost 34,574,668.55 PLN (276.55 PLN/person). The authors analyzed the cost of primary care services taking into consideration the number of beneficiaries, their age and value of services per capita in year. Conclusions. The most services were provided by the primary care facilities, however costs of long-term care services (when calculated for one beneficiary) were highest. Most frequent chronic diseases amongst beneficiaries of primary care (10 most frequent) were: arterial hypertension, chronic ischaemic heart disease, insulin-independent diabetes, bronchial asthma, hypertension affecting heart, cardiac insufficiency, atherosclerosis, insulin-dependent diabetes, COPD, angina pectoris. "Top 10" of most expensive lengthy illnesses treated by primary care were: stroke, cerebral bleeding, infarction of the brain, results of cerebral vessels illness, different illness of cerebral vessels, insulindependent diabetes, hypertension affecting heart and kidneys, atherosclerosis, spontaneous hypertension, other non-traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage.
