Impact of rurality on health care utilization among Australian residents from 2009 to 2021.
HILDA Survey
health care utilization
hospitalization
physician visits
rurality
Journal
The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association
ISSN: 1748-0361
Titre abrégé: J Rural Health
Pays: England
ID NLM: 8508122
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
03 Oct 2024
03 Oct 2024
Historique:
revised:
29
08
2024
received:
26
03
2024
accepted:
09
09
2024
medline:
4
10
2024
pubmed:
4
10
2024
entrez:
4
10
2024
Statut:
aheadofprint
Résumé
In Australia, there is limited research regarding the effect of rurality on health care utilization using longitudinal data. We analyzed data from four annual waves (2009, 2013, 2017, and 2021) of the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to examine changes in the health care utilization over time among urban and rural residents. Poisson regression models estimated adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for rural versus urban residents, accounting for a range of health-related and sociodemographic characteristics. Health care utilization was measured using four key indicators: visits to family doctor or another general practitioner (GP visits from hereon), hospital admissions, total nights' stay in the hospital, and prescribed medications taken on a regular basis. The aIRR for GP visits among rural versus urban Australian residents increased over time, from 0.89 (95% CI: 0.82 to 0.97) in 2009 to 0.96 (95% CI: 0.89 to 1.04) in 2021 although not consistently increased in a statistically significant manner. While there were no consistent temporal patterns, our analysis found that rural residents experienced higher number of hospital admissions (aIRR, 1.12 to 1.15) and number of nights in the hospital in the last 12 months (aIRR, 1.18 to 1.25) compared to urban residents. Moreover, rurality had little to no effect on the number of prescribed medications taken on a regualar basis in the 12 months preceding the HILDA Surveys in 2013, 2017, and 2021. This study found that GP visits were less frequent among rural residents compared to metropolitan residents in 2009, indicating health care access disparities between rural and urban areas in Australia. However, the differences in GP visits between rural and urban areas were less pronounced from 2013 to 2021.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Informations de copyright
© 2024 The Author(s). The Journal of Rural Health published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Rural Health Association.
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