Estimating the Amount of Overweight and Obesity Related Health-Care Use in the Republic of Ireland Using SLÁN Data

Edel Doherty, Anne Dee and Ciaran O’neill
Additional contact information
Edel Doherty: National University of Ireland, Galway
Anne Dee: Health Services Executive-West, Limerick
Ciaran O’neill: National University of Ireland, Galway

The Economic and Social Review, 2012, vol. 43, issue 2, 227–250

Abstract: In Ireland, over half the adult population are now considered to be overweight or obese. This has implications for individuals in terms of their health as well as for the health service in terms of care utilisation. Using SLÁN (2007) data we estimate the impact on use of general practitioner (GP) services, hospital inpatient and hospital day case services of overweight and obesity. Our modelling approach accommodates potential unobserved heterogeneity associated with utilisation of primary and secondary health care. Controlling for a range of sociodemographic variables, we find that overweight and obesity are significant predictors of GP utilisation and obesity is a significant predictor of inpatient episodes. Translating increased utilisation into costs, primary health-care costs are estimated conservatively to be approximately €17 million higher and secondary health-care costs approximately €24 million higher in the Republic of Ireland as a result of overweight and obesity in adults. Given trends, overweight and obesity are likely to present an increasing challenge to the health service in the future that warrant further investigation.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.esr.ie/article/view/48/40 First version,2012 (application/pdf)

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:eso:journl:v:43:y:2012:i:2:p:227-250

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Social Review from Economic and Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aedin Doris ().