The current social changes and changes to the structure of the population in the UK make predicting future health and social care spending a significant challenge. Health care accounts for a large and expanding share of public finances and has been growing ever since the NHS was first adopted. This trend is expected to continue over the coming decades in response to growing public expectations for more and better-quality healthcare, alongside a growing and ageing population. It is therefore crucial to understand how and why spending on health care has risen over time and how costs are likely to change in the future.
The aim of this study specifically is to produce statistics on the use of primary care. We will look at the number of primary care consultations per year from 2000 to 2018 broken down by age, gender, proximity to death, consultation type (e.g. face-to-face, home visit) and practice staff role. These figures will feed into a separate, larger project that is exploring trends in healthcare use in England since 2000 across a number of different services.
This study will allow us to understand how primary care has changed since 2000. The results of this study will be used in a time series analysis of primary care activity, comparing actual activity levels with those expected through population growth and aging and mortality rates. The results of this analysis will inform future health policy and funding decisions.
This aim of this study is to produce summary statistics on the use of primary care. We will produce counts of the number of primary care consultations per year from 2000 to 2018 broken down by age, gender, proximity to death, consultation type and practice staff role.
The figures generated from this study will feed into a separate, larger project that is exploring trends in healthcare use in England since 2000 across a number of different services. Within that project, nested negative binomial regression models will be used to estimate the effect of different factors on the counts of activity in primary care. The dependent variable will be counts of consultations. The independent variables will include age (5-year age bands), gender, proximity to death (0-12 months, 12-24 months or greater than 24 months), consultation type and practice staff role.
The study will improve our understanding of the growth in primary care consultations and proportion of this growth that can be explained by changes in demography and morbidity. This in turn will help the development of further research in health policy and funding.
Primary care consultation rates key variables are: age; sex; proximity to death; consultation type; practice staff role
Toby Watt - Chief Investigator - The Health Foundation
Andrew Campbell - Corresponding Applicant - The Health Foundation
Zoe Firth - Collaborator - The Health Foundation