Regulation versus practice - The impact of accessibility on the use of specialist health care in Norway

Tor Iversen and Gry Stine Kopperud
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Gry Stine Kopperud: Institute of Health Management and Health Economics, Postal: P.O. Box 1089 Blindern, NO-0317 Oslo, Norway

No 2005:2, HERO Online Working Paper Series from University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme

Abstract: In Norway specialized health services are provided both by public hospitals and by privately practicing specialists who have a contract with the public sector. Patients’ co-payment is the same irrespective of the type of provider they visit. The ambition of equity in the allocation of medical care is high among all political parties. The instruments for auditing whether these goals are fulfilled are not equally ambitious. The objective of the present study is to explore whether laws and regulations that govern the allocation of specialist health care resources in fact are fulfilled. Panel data from the Survey of Living Conditions are merged with data on capacity and spatial access to primary and specialist care. We find that accessibility and socio-economic variables play a considerable role in determining both the probability of at least one visit and the number of visits to a private specialist. A person with a higher university degree living in a municipality with the highest value of the geographical accessibility index has a 46%-points higher probability of at least one visit to a private specialist compared with a person with junior high living in a municipality with the lowest value of the accessibility index. With regard to visits to a hospital outpatient department these variables are not found to have significant effects. We conclude that public ambitions and regulations are fulfilled for specialist services provided by public hospitals. With regard to the provision of services provided by publicly financed private specialists we find a discrepancy between public goals and surveyed practice.

Keywords: specialist health services; utilization; equity; private/public provision; survey data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 H51 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-06-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-reg
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Regulation versus practice ‐ the impact of accessibility on the use of specialist health care in Norway (2005)
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