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
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 01:18 authored by Peter DoltonPeter Dolton, Vikram PathaniaRestricted 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 EconomicsISSN
0167-6296Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Volume
49Page range
193-208Department affiliated with
- Economics Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2016-05-20First Open Access (FOA) Date
2017-12-16First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2016-05-20Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC