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Background: The Oslo out-of-hours primary healthcare service is responsible for making doctor’s visits when the nursing home doctor is unavailable. Out-of-hours doctors report that the patient information they are given varies widely. Objective: To chart the patient information provided to out-of-hours doctors during nursing home visits. We also sought to identify factors associated with the availability of patients’ medical records, information about advance care plans, and the active treatment commenced. Method: Out-of-hours doctors filled out a survey for each nursing home visit in Oslo during a three-month period in 2013. We analysed the data as a cross-sectional study with binary logical regression. Results: We registered a total of 362 doctor’s visits. Altogether 60.2 per cent of the patients visited were women, 76.0 per cent were > 80 years old, and 68.5 per cent were assessed as being cognitively impaired or having dementia. The most frequent reasons for the visits were infections and symptoms in the urinary tract (26.8 per cent) and respiratory tract (25.7 per cent). Of the total number of patients, 18.5 per cent were hospitalised. Parenteral treatment was administered to 14.1 per cent of the patients. The out-of-hours doctor was not given access to the patient’s medical record in 52.5 per cent of the visits. Patient age under 80 years old was positively associated with access to the patient’s medical record [odds ratio, OR 1.68 (1.07–2.81), p = 0.05]. Factors negatively associated with access to the patient’s medical record were visits during the daytime on weekdays [OR 0.49 (0.25–0.97), p = 0.04] or when the doctor perceived that the care staff were unfamiliar with the patient [OR 0.23 (0.11–0.48), p < 0.01]. Out-of-hours doctors were informed about decisions relating to reduced therapeutic intensity for a small number of patients: hospital admission (21.3 per cent), intravenous treatment (17.1 per cent), attempt at cardiopulmonary resuscitation (19.6 per cent). Explanatory variables positively associated with receiving such information were that the patient had a limited ability to communicate [OR 2.13 (1.31–3.46), p < 0.01] or that the doctor’s visits took place during the daytime [OR 1.97 (1.3–3.76), p = 0.04]. Doctors commenced active treatment at the nursing home less often for patients in sheltered units than for those in open wards [OR 0.46 (0.23–0.95), p = 0.04]. Conclusion: The finding that out-of-hours doctors regularly were not given or did not acquire clinical background information about acutely ill nursing home patients represents a quality-related problem for diagnosis and treatment. Inappropriate treatment and unnecessary hospitalisation are potential consequences.

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