Increasing unexpected healthcare utilisation in developed countries has led to several questions from the stakeholders, especially the health policy makers. Critics say unexpected healthcare utilisation cannot be prevented, while others say unscheduled utilisation can be avoided if adequate measures are put in place.
I believe, if the root cause of unexpected healthcare utilisation is known, there may be significant reduction to the high influx of patients to the health centres.
Question: In your opinion, what are the factors responsible for sudden utilisation of our health centres?
Dear Aramide
You raised a question on a complex and complicate aspect of health care, that is utilization. Utilization(actual use of health care services) expressed as rates or proportions or frequency is a measure of the degree of accommodation between health care systems and population characteristics. Why do people use health care services?. The answer is not straight forward. But we assume that they use the services because they need them and these services are available. The major determinants of services utilization in brief are: Health need, cost and income, distance between residence and location of source of care, degree of awareness, satisfaction and expectation, organizational aspects like referral and waiting lists, sociodemographic characteristics and others. Therefore to understand the pattern of utilization and forces behind the pattern and variation over time and across populations requires careful analysis of available data and perhaps household surveys.
Well said Omran, reasons or healthcare service utilization varies across populations and are peculiar to the situation within such population as highlighted in your response. Understanding the global factors may contribute the current state of knowledge, thus gives health commissioners / policy makers an appropriate path to channel their interventions in reducing service utilization in specific locations.
Aramide,
That depends on the type of health system. The reason will depend on if it is a system that is free at the point of use or a paid for service.
It also depends on if you are looking at primary care or secondary care utilisation
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