Health services utilization of people having and not having a regular doctor in Canada.
Int J Health Plann Manage
; 32(2): 180-188, 2017 Apr.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-26865012
ABSTRACT
Canada having a universal health insurance plan that provides hospital and physician benefits offers a natural experiment of whether continuity of care actually provides lower or higher utilization of services. The question we are evaluating is whether Canadians, who have a regular physician, use more health resources than those who do not have one? Using two statistical methods, including propensity score matching and zero-inflated negative binomial regression, we analyzed data from the 2010 and 2007/2008 Canadian Community Health Surveys separately to document differences between people self-reportedly having and not having a regular doctor in the utilization of general practitioner, specialist, and hospital services. The results showed, consistently for all two statistical methods and two datasets used, that people reportedly having a regular doctor used more healthcare services than a matched group of people who was self-reportedly not having a regular doctor. For specialist and hospital utilization, the statistically significant differences were in the likelihood if the service was used but not in the number of specialist visits or hospital nights among users. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Médicos de Familia
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Servicios de Salud
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Accesibilidad a los Servicios de Salud
Tipo de estudio:
Observational_studies
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Prevalence_studies
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Qualitative_research
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Risk_factors_studies
Límite:
Adolescent
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Adult
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Aged
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Child
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Female
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Humans
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Male
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Middle aged
País como asunto:
America do norte
Idioma:
En
Año:
2017
Tipo del documento:
Article