TY - JOUR

T1 - Regional differences of outpatient physician supply as a theoretical economic and empirical generalized linear model

AU - Scholz, Stefan

AU - von der Schulenburg, Johann Matthias Graf

AU - Greiner, Wolfgang

N1 - Funding Information: The Authors thank the federal ASHIP (KBV) for providing data on the number of physicians. Stefan Scholz also likes to thank Manuel Batram and Verena Vogt for their valuable comments on the paper. We also acknowledge support for the Article Processing Charge by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Open Access Publication Fund of Bielefeld University. We thank our reviewers Milena M. Santric Milicevic, Susanne Ozegowski, Thomas Ricketts, and Ansgar A. Wuebker for their valuable

PY - 2015/11/17

Y1 - 2015/11/17

N2 - Background: Regional differences in physician supply can be found in many health care systems, regardless of their organizational and financial structure. A theoretical model is developed for the physicians' decision on office allocation, covering demand-side factors and a consumption time function. Methods: To test the propositions following the theoretical model, generalized linear models were estimated to explain differences in 412 German districts. Various factors found in the literature were included to control for physicians' regional preferences. Results: Evidence in favor of the first three propositions of the theoretical model could be found. Specialists show a stronger association to higher populated districts than GPs. Although indicators for regional preferences are significantly correlated with physician density, their coefficients are not as high as population density. Conclusions: If regional disparities should be addressed by political actions, the focus should be to counteract those parameters representing physicians' preferences in over- and undersupplied regions.

AB - Background: Regional differences in physician supply can be found in many health care systems, regardless of their organizational and financial structure. A theoretical model is developed for the physicians' decision on office allocation, covering demand-side factors and a consumption time function. Methods: To test the propositions following the theoretical model, generalized linear models were estimated to explain differences in 412 German districts. Various factors found in the literature were included to control for physicians' regional preferences. Results: Evidence in favor of the first three propositions of the theoretical model could be found. Specialists show a stronger association to higher populated districts than GPs. Although indicators for regional preferences are significantly correlated with physician density, their coefficients are not as high as population density. Conclusions: If regional disparities should be addressed by political actions, the focus should be to counteract those parameters representing physicians' preferences in over- and undersupplied regions.

KW - Physician density

KW - Physician supply

KW - Regional analysis

KW - Spatial analysis

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84946945343&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1186/s12960-015-0088-1

DO - 10.1186/s12960-015-0088-1

M3 - Article

C2 - 26578155

AN - SCOPUS:84946945343

VL - 13

JO - Human resources for health

JF - Human resources for health

SN - 1478-4491

IS - 1

M1 - 85

ER -