Regional dispersion of independent professionals in primary health care in The Netherlands

One of the main objectives of Dutch Government policy on primary health care concerns equal regional dispersion of health care provisions. At this moment these provisions are geographically not equally distributed when measured in terms of the number of inhabitants per practising professional in primary health care. In this paper the current patterns of dispersion of five professional groups are described. The groups concerned are the general practitioners, dentists, physiotherapists, pharmacists and midwives. These patterns are mainly a consequence of market forces because the professionals have had the freedom to choose where to practise their profession until recently. These decisions are affected by the "place utility" of an area. In this paper place utility is conceived as being determinated by the opportunities of an area to earn a living and the amenities of an area as residential and living-environment. These concepts are operationalized by a set of independent variables. In order to understand the (differences between the) patterns of dispersion of the professional groups concerned multiple regression-analysis has been used, of which the results are compared to the hypotheses formulated.