More doctors, better health? A generalised synthetic control approach to estimating impacts of increasing doctors under Brazil's Mais Medicos programme.
Soc Sci Med
; 358: 117222, 2024 Oct.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39181082
ABSTRACT
Worldwide, there are an insufficient number of primary care physicians to provide accessible, high-quality primary care services. Better knowledge on the health impacts of policies aimed at improving access to primary care physicians is important for informing future policies. Using a generalised synthetic control estimator (GSC), we estimate the effect of the increase in primary care physicians from the Programa Mais Médicos in Brazil. The GSC allows us to estimates a continuous treatment effects which are heterogenous by region. We exploit the variation in physicians allocated to each Brazilian microregion to identify the impact of an increasing Mais Médicos primary care physicians. We explore hospitalisations and mortality rates (both total and from ambulatory care sensitive conditions) as outcomes. Our analysis differs from previous work by estimating the impact of the increase in physician numbers, as opposed to the overall impact of programme participation. We examine the impact on hospitalisations and mortality rates and employ a panel dataset with monthly observations of all Brazilian microregion over the period 2008-2017. We find limited effects of an increase in primary care physicians impacting health outcomes - with no significant impact of the Programa Mais Médicos on hospitalisations or mortality rates. Potential explanations include substitution of other health professionals, impacts materialising over the longer-term, and poor within-region allocation of Mais Médicos physicians.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Hospitalização
Limite:
Humans
País/Região como assunto:
America do sul
/
Brasil
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Soc Sci Med
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de publicação:
Reino Unido