Copayments for general practice visits

Lifestyle counseling in hypertension-related visits – analysis of video-taped general practice visits

BACKGROUND The general practitioner (GP) can play an important role in promoting a healthy lifestyle, which is especially relevant in people with an elevated risk of cardiovascular diseases due to hypertension. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the frequency and content of lifestyle counseling about weight loss, nutrition, physical activity, and smoking by GPs in hypertension-re...

General practice cooperatives: long waiting times for home visits due to long distances?

BACKGROUND The introduction of large-scale out-of-hours GP cooperatives has led to questions about increased distances between the GP cooperatives and the homes of patients and the increasing waiting times for home visits in urgent cases. We studied the relationship between the patient's waiting time for a home visit and the distance to the GP cooperative. Further, we investigated if other fact...

Helmut Farbmacher: Copayments for doctor visits in Germany and the probability of visiting a physician - Evidence from a natural experiment

SUMMARY The German health care reform of 2004 imposes a charge of e 10 for the first visit to a doctor in each quarter of the year. At first glance, there is no inhibiting effect of this fee on utilization in the German SocioEconomic Panel. However, this study reveals that the true effect is diluted by a special characteristic of the fee. Exploiting random variation in the interview date, this ...

Training for General Practice.

The practice is a two-man training practice with a list of approximately 4,000, mainly in social classes III, IV and V. Over the past five years, 10 trainees have been attached to the practice, each for a period of six months. Three of the trainees have been women. Two hundred and fifty-eight patients who visited the surgery in a two-week period were asked by the receptionist to complete a ques...

Training for general practice.