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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Wen-Chen Tsai, Dr PH, Department of Health Services Management, China Medical College, 13 Ln.16 Sec.3 Chungching Rd, Taya, Taichung, 428, Taiwan, 011-886-4-25603149, wtsai@mail.cmc.edu.tw and Pei-Tseng Kung, ScD, Graduate Institute of Health Administration, Taichung Healthcare and Management University, No. 11 Ln. 16 Sec. 3 Chungching Rd., Taya, Taichung, 428, Taiwan.
Objective: since 1995, Taiwan has implemented National Health Insurance (NHI) program, which is a universal and comprehensive health insurance. In recent years, the ambulatory care utilization has been increasing and the annual national ambulatory service expenditure largely went up. This research aims to examine whether the supply of physicians affects the use of ambulatory services by the insured in Taiwan.
Methods: this research used the medical care sub-regions as the observation unit from 1996 to 1999. Information about ambulatory service utilization was collected from the NHI dataset. The other related information was obtained from Taiwan Demographic Fact Book published by the Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan. This study applied the fixed-effects model as means of statistic analysis. The model examines how the supply of physicians influences ambulatory service utilization per capita given an area, after controlling for extraneous factors.
Results: the research clearly proves that the physician supply does increase medical demand in ambulatory services after controlling for other factors. The result shows that increasing one physician per ten thousand population would raise 1.48% ambulatory care expenditure per capital per year and 1.35% of physician visits given an area. Conclusion: this research finds that the increase of physician density would take responsibility for 10.72 % of the increase of ambulatory service expenditures during 1996 to 1999 in Taiwan. The result implies that increase of physician density may increase medical care accessibility or market competition that will increase medical demand for the ambulatory care utilization.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Taiwan Health, Ambulatory Care
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.