Effect of type of insurance and income on waiting time for outpatient care

Kathrin Roll, Tom Stargardt () and Jonas Schreyögg

No 2011/03, hche Research Papers from University of Hamburg, Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of type of insurance, income, and reason for appointment on waiting time for an appointment and waiting time in the physician's practice in the outpatient sector. Data were obtained from a German patient survey conducted between 2007 and 2009. We differentiated between GP and specialist and controlled for socioeconomic, structural, and institutional characteristics as well as interactions between type of insurance and control variables. Our results reveal that private health insurance plays a significant role in faster access to care at GP and specialist practices. Access to care is also highly influenced by the reason for an appointment. We also found that increased income had a negative effect on waiting time in practices and on waiting time for an appointment in GP practices. Whether inequalities in access to health care also impact overall quality of treatment needs to be investigated in future research.

Keywords: access to care; outpatient care; private health insurance; public health insurance; waiting times (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/65670/1/727582135.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Effect of Type of Insurance and Income on Waiting Time for Outpatient Care (2012)
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:zbw:hcherp:201103

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in hche Research Papers from University of Hamburg, Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().