Comparison of Health Care Utilization Among Patients Affiliated and Not Affiliated with Healthcare Professionals in China

Abstract

Background Doing “more” in healthcare can be a major threat to the delivery of high-quality health care. It is important to identify the supplier-induced demand (SID) of health care. This study aims to test SID hypothesis by comparing health care utilization among patients affiliated with healthcare professionals and their counterpart patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. Methods Using cross-sectional data of the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) implemented in 2014, we identified 806 patients affiliated with healthcare professionals and 22788 patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. We used the coarsened exact matching method to control for confounding factors. The main outcomes were outpatient rate and expenditure as well as inpatient rate and expenditure. Results The matched outpatient rate of patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals was 0.6% higher (P=0.754) than that of their counterparts, and the matched inpatient rate was 1.1% lower (P=0.167). Patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals paid significantly more (680 CNY, P<0.001) than their counterparts did per outpatient visit (1126 CNY [95% CI 885-1368] vs. 446 CNY [95% CI 248-643]), while patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals paid insignificantly less (2061 CNY, P=0.751) than their counterparts did per inpatient visit (15583 CNY [95% CI 12052-19115] vs. 17645 CNY [95% CI 4884-30406]). Conclusion Our results lend support on supplier-induced demand hypothesis and highlight the need for policies to address the large outpatient care expenses of patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. Our study also suggests that as the public becomes more informed, the demand of health care may persist while heath care expenditure per outpatient visit may decrease sharply due to the decline in supplier-induced demand. As significant misbehaviors performed by providers, it’s important to create right incentives to offer less avoidable healthcare service during outpatient visits may work to reduce healthcare costs.