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Waiting Times: Evidence of Social Inequalities in Access for Care

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Data and Measures in Health Services Research

Part of the book series: Health Services Research ((HEALTHSR))

Abstract

Equity is a key policy objective in many publicly funded health systems across OECD countries. Policymakers aim at providing access based on need and not ability to pay. This chapter focuses on the use of waiting times for studying inequalities of access to care. Studies of inequalities in waiting times by socioeconomic status are relatively rare, the traditional focus being on measurement of inequalities in healthcare utilization. Waiting time data are readily available for the analysis through administrative databases. They are commonly used for reporting on health system performance. Within publicly funded health systems, the duration of the wait is supposed to be the same for patients with different socioeconomic status for a given level of need. Patients with higher need or urgency are supposed to wait less based on implicit or explicit prioritization rules. A recent empirical literature seems however to suggest that within several publicly funded health systems, nonprice rationing does not guarantee equality of access by socioeconomic status. Individuals with higher socioeconomic status (as measured by income or educational attainment) tend to wait less for publicly funded hospital care than those with lower socioeconomic status. This negative gradient between waiting time and socioeconomic status may be interpreted as evidence of inequity within publicly funded systems which favors rich and more-educated patients over poorer and less-educated ones. The chapter provides an overview of methods and data to investigate the presence of social inequalities in waiting times and highlights key results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, UK

    Luigi Siciliani

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  1. Luigi Siciliani
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Correspondence to Luigi Siciliani .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of British Columbia Dept. Health Care & Epidemiology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Boris Sobolev

  2. Capital District Health Authority, Dalhousie Univ Dept of Comm Health & Epi Capital District Health Authority, HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Adrian Levy

  3. ICON plc , VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada

    Sarah Goring

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Siciliani, L. (2015). Waiting Times: Evidence of Social Inequalities in Access for Care. In: Sobolev, B., Levy, A., Goring, S. (eds) Data and Measures in Health Services Research. Health Services Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7673-4_17-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7673-4_17-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7673-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference MedicineReference Module Medicine

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