The Importance of Preventive Medical Care for Managing Chronic Disease

Claire Boone, Pablo Celhay, Paul Gertler and Tadeja Gracner

No 33738, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study how preventive medical care use affects health behaviors and outcomes for patients with chronic diseases. Leveraging variation induced by a national appointment reminder program, rolled out across 315 public primary care clinics in Chile, we use an instrumental variables approach with patient-level administrative data from over 300,000 patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension. We find that increased preventive visits lead to more screening tests and large increases in medication adherence. Preventive care also leads to earlier detection and treatment of cardiovascular complications: we document an increase in cardiovascular hospitalizations but a reduction in in-hospital mortality.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: AG DEV EH PE
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