Medical Service Provision and Costs: Do Walk-In Clinics Differ from Other Primary Care Delivery Settings?

Darrel J. Weinkauf and Boris Kralj

Canadian Public Policy, 1998, vol. 24, issue 4, 471-484

Abstract: Reductions in health care funding by both the federal and provincial governments in recent years have focused attention on the cost-effectiveness of health care delivery, particularly on the delivery of primary care services. We use data extracted from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) claims database to assess differences between walk-in clinics and other primary care delivery settings in initial visit costs, follow-up visit costs, service duplication, and diagnoses treated. Our analysis indicates that the generally negative reputation of walk-in clinics is largely underserved. Walk-in clinics differ very little from office-based practices in terms of overall costs, the percentage of patients seen again, and follow-up costs. The relatively high costs of primary care provided in emergency departments combined with the fact that a fairly large share of visits to emergency departments are for self-limiting conditions suggest that patient education on the proper use of emergency departments or providing alternatives, such as telephone triage services, should result in health care cost savings.

Date: 1998
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0317-0861%2819981 ... SPACD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L (text/html)
only available to JSTOR subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpp:issued:v:24:y:1998:i:4:p:471-484

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.utpjournals.com/loi/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iver Chong ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).