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Free Children's Visits and General Practice Attendance

Michael Edmund O'Callaghan1, Lina Zgaga2, Darach O'Ciardha2

  • 1Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland drmichaelocallaghan@gmail.com.

Annals of Family Medicine
|May 16, 2018
PubMed

Insights

Free general practice care for children under six in Ireland led to a significant increase in service use. This highlights the impact of accessible healthcare on child health service utilization and planning.

Area of Science:

  • Health Services Research
  • Pediatric Healthcare Policy
  • Public Health

Background:

  • In July 2015, Ireland introduced free general practice services for children under six.
  • This policy change aimed to improve access, as 70% of this age group previously lacked free access.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To evaluate the impact of free general practice care on service utilization among children under six.
  • To analyze changes in both daytime and out-of-hours general practice visits before and after the policy implementation.

Main Methods:

  • Retrospective analysis of anonymized visitation data from 8 general practices in North Dublin.
  • Comparison of service use in the year preceding and the year following the introduction of free care for children under six.

Main Results:

  • A 9.4% increase in daytime service attendance and a 20.1% increase in out-of-hours service utilization were observed.
  • Overall annual visits increased by 28.7% for daytime and 25.7% for out-of-hours services, totaling 6,682 additional visits.
  • The average annual visitation rate for daytime services rose from 2.77 to 3.25 visits per child.

Conclusions:

  • The introduction of free general practice services significantly boosted healthcare utilization among young children.
  • These findings have important implications for healthcare service planning, particularly in systems with mixed public and private funding.
Abstract

Keywords:
Irelandafter-hourschildfee-for-servicefees and chargesgeneral practicehealth care utilizationhealth planningout-of-hourspediatricspractice-based researchprimary health carestate medicine

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