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Dolton Pathania 7 day opening May 2016.pdf (1.39 MB)

Can increased primary care access reduce demand for emergency care? Evidence from England's 7-day GP opening

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posted on 2023-06-09, 01:18 authored by Peter DoltonPeter Dolton, Vikram Pathania
Restricted access to primary care can lead to avoidable, excessive use of expensive emergency care. Since 2013, partly to alleviate overcrowding at the Accident & Emergency (A&E) units of hospitals, the UK has been piloting 7-day opening of General Practitioner (GP) practices to improve primary care access for patients. We evaluate the impact of these pilots on patient attendances at A&E. We estimate that 7-day GP opening has reduced A&E attendances by patients of pilot practices by 9.9% with most of the impact on weekends which see A&E attendances fall by 17.9%. The effect is non-monotonic in case severity with most of the fall occurring in cases of moderate severity. An additional finding is that there is also a 9.9% fall in weekend hospital admissions (from A&E) which is entirely driven by a fall in admissions of elderly patients. The impact on A&E attendances appears to be bigger among wealthier patients. We present evidence in support of a causal interpretation of our results and discuss policy implications.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Journal of Health Economics

ISSN

0167-6296

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

49

Page range

193-208

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-05-20

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2017-12-16

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-05-20

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