Does increasing physician volume in primary healthcare facilities under the hierarchical medical system help reduce hospital service utilisation in China? A fixed-effects analysis using province-level panel data.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To examine whether increases in physician volume in primary healthcare facilities are associated with reduced utilisation of hospital outpatient and inpatient services after China facilitated the establishment of the hierarchical medical system.

Design

We used a two-way fixed-effects regression to examine the association between the annual number of physicians in primary healthcare facilities and that of patient visits per physician, inpatient admissions and total expenses per outpatient visit in public hospitals during 2010-2014 and 2015-2019. Variables were log transformed to ensure the normal distribution of the data.

Setting

Province-level data of all 31 provinces in mainland China from 2010 to 2019 were collected from the China Health Statistics Yearboo

SUBMITTER: Li X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9950906 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature