General practitioner utilisation in Ireland: the role of socio-economic factors

Substantial variation across socio-economic groups in general practitioner utilisation patterns is observed in Ireland. This may reflect both the influence of socio-economic factors on health and on the demand for health care, and the fact that lower income groups are entitled to free GP care whereas the remainder of the population must pay on a fee-per-item basis. The paper analyses the influence of economic incentives and socio-economic factors on GP utilisation using data obtained in a large-scale household survey. This allows the different utilisation patterns of different social classes/income groups, and those with entitlement to free care vs the remainder of the population, to be documented. The importance of attempting to control for health status is shown, and the difficulties in trying to disentangle the effects of incentives from those of social class or income illustrated.