RESUMEN
People need to trust that necessary care will be provided in the case of serious illness or injury, but negative experiences with the healthcare system reduce confidence. In this article, we discuss the effect of cost barriers on people's confidence in receiving safe and quality medical care when falling seriously ill in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Asunto(s)
Enfermedad Crítica/terapia , Aceptación de la Atención de Salud/estadística & datos numéricos , Confianza , Australasia , Costo de Enfermedad , Enfermedad Crítica/economía , Enfermedad Crítica/psicología , Europa (Continente) , Femenino , Disparidades en Atención de Salud , Humanos , Masculino , América del Norte , Satisfacción del Paciente/economía , Satisfacción del Paciente/estadística & datos numéricos , Calidad de la Atención de SaludRESUMEN
Equal access to health care is a central goal of all European health-care systems. International studies, however, show that this goal has not been accomplished yet. The aim of this study is to investigate if there are inequalities across patients with different levels of education and if these differences vary with the institutional set-up of health-care systems. The test of this hypothesis is based on a comparison of eleven European countries using data from the SHARE survey (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe). Our results show that in countries with institutionalised gatekeeping systems differences of utilisation between educational groups are rather low. In countries with free access to specialists, patients with higher levels of education show a higher probability of specialist visits than their counterparts with lower levels of education.