Degree of regional variation and effects of health insurance-related factors on the utilization of 24 diverse healthcare
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Degree of regional variation and effects of health insurance-related factors on the utilization of 24 diverse healthcare services - a cross-sectional study Wenjia Wei1* , Agne Ulyte1, Oliver Gruebner1,2, Viktor von Wyl1, Holger Dressel3, Beat Brüngger1,4, Eva Blozik4,5, Caroline Bähler1,4, Julia Braun6 and Matthias Schwenkglenks1
Abstract Background: Regional variation in healthcare utilization could reflect unequal access to care, which may lead to detrimental consequences to quality of care and costs. The aims of this study were to a) describe the degree of regional variation in utilization of 24 diverse healthcare services in eligible populations in Switzerland, and b) identify potential drivers, especially health insurance-related factors, and explore the consistency of their effects across the services. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using health insurance claims data for the year of 2014. The studied 24 healthcare services were predominantly outpatient services, ranging from screening to secondary prevention. For each service, a target population was identified based on applicable clinical recommendations, and outcome variable was the use of the service. Possible influencing factors included patients’ socio-demographics, health insurance-related and clinical characteristics. For each service, we performed a comprehensive methodological approach including small area variation analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and multilevel multivariable modelling using 106 mobilité spaciale regions as the higher level. We further calculated the median odds ratio in model residuals to assess the unexplained regional variation. Results: Unadjusted utilization rates varied considerably across the 24 healthcare services, ranging from 3.5% (osteoporosis screening) to 76.1% (recommended thyroid disease screening sequence). The effects of health insurance-related characteristics were mostly consistent. A higher annual deductible level was mostly associated with lower utilization. Supplementary insurance, supplementary hospital insurance and having chosen a managed care model were associated with higher utilization of most services. Managed care models showed a tendency towards more recommended care. After adjusting for multiple influencing factors, the unexplained regional variation was generally small across the 24 services, with all MORs below 1.5. (Continued on next page)
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Epidemiology, Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Hirschengraben 84, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indica
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