Researchers at Peking University Target Health Services Research (Synergy of policies to strengthen primary care: evidence from a national repeated cross-sectional study)

2020 SEP 30 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Current study results on Health and Medicine - Health Services Research have been published. According to news originating from Beijing, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “People bypass primary healthcare (PHC) institutions to seek expensive healthcare at high-level hospitals, leading to escalating medical costs and inefficient use of resources. In 2009, China launched nationwide synergic policies on primary care strengthening, to tackle access to healthcare and financial protection.”

Financial supporters for this research include National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Peking University, “This study aimed to assess the impact of the two policy areas, health insurance and health workforce, on healthcare seeking behavior. Drawing on national survey data before (2008) and after (2013) the policies, we linked individual-level data on healthcare-seeking behavior with county-level data on health workforce and health insurance. We constructed a multilevel zero-inflated negative binomial regression to examine the impacts of average reimbursement rate (ARR) of health insurance and the density of registered physicians on outpatient/inpatient visits, and multilevel multinomial logistic regression for the impacts on choice of outpatient/inpatient care providers. Although the increase in health insurance ARR and physician density have positive impacts on individuals’ healthcare use, their impacts might be weakened during 2008 and 2013, and the negative impacts of investment of those in PHC institutions on likelihood of visiting hospitals was larger. The negative impacts of ARR at PHC institutions on likelihood of visiting county-, municipal-and higher-level hospitals in 2013 was 28 percentage points, 66 percentage points and 33 percentage points larger than these in 2008. Primary care strengthening requires synergic policies.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Effective mechanisms for coordination across multisectoral actions are necessities for deepening those policies to ensure efficient delivery of healthcare without experiencing financial risks.”

For more information on this research see: Synergy of policies to strengthen primary care: evidence from a national repeated cross-sectional study. Bmc Health Services Research, 2020;20(1):865. Bmc Health Services Research can be contacted at: Biomed Central LTD, Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland St, London W1T 4LB, England. (BioMed Central - http://www.biomedcentral.com/; Bmc Health Services Research - http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmchealthservres/)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Jin Xu, China Center for Health Development Studies, Peking University, Box 505, 38 Xue Yuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100191, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Yinzi Jin, Weiming Zhu, Yaoguang Zhang, Ling Xu and Qingyue Meng.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-020-05695-4. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Bmc Health Services Research is: Biomed Central LTD, Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland St, London W1T 4LB, England.

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