Evaluating the impact of physicians' provision on primary healthcare: Evidence from Brazil's More Doctors Program

This study aims to evaluate the More Doctors Program (Programa Mais Médicos) in terms of the provision of physicians, presenting estimates of its impact on hospitalization for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. The differences-in-differences method was used with propensity score matching (double difference matching), using 3 specifications, a falsification test, and also a dynamic endogeneity test to confirm the robustness of the results. For the application of this methodology, a panel of municipal data was constructed covering several variables related to socioeconomic, demographic, and public health infrastructure characteristics in the cities for the period from 2010 to 2016. The results show a significant reduction in hospital admissions in treated municipalities with an increasing and perceptible effect in the second year of the program.