@article{6df025bdc6894e94b2b862ae2161010b,
title = "Hours worked by general practitioners and waiting times for primary care",
abstract = "The decline in the working hours of general practitioners (GPs) is a key factor influencing access to health care in many countries. We investigate the effect of changes in hours worked by GPs on waiting times in primary care using the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life longitudinal survey of Australian doctors. We estimate GP fixed effects models for waiting time and use family circumstances to instrument for GP's hours worked. We find that a 10% reduction in hours worked increases average patient waiting time by 12%. Our findings highlight the importance of GPs' labor supply at the intensive margin in determining the length of time patients must wait to see their doctor.",
keywords = "fixed effects, instrumental variable model, labor supply, MABEL survey, primary care, waiting times",
author = "Megha Swami and Hugh Gravelle and Anthony Scott and Jenny Williams",
note = "Funding Information: This study used data from the MABEL longitudinal survey of doctors conducted by the University of Melbourne and Monash University (the MABEL research team). Funding for MABEL comes from the National Health and Medical Research Council (Health Services Research Grant: 2008–2011 and Centre for Research Excellence in Medical Workforce Dynamics: 2012–2017) with additional support from the Department of Health in 2008 and Health Workforce Australia (in 2013). Megha Swami's PhD study was supported by Melbourne Research Scholarship from the University of Melbourne. The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees, participants of the 22nd International Panel Data Conference and 29th PhD Conference in Economics and Business for helpful comments, and Tamara Taylor, the MABEL Data Manager, for assistance with the survey data. The MABEL research team bears no responsibility for how the data have been analyzed, used, or summarized in this research. Publisher Copyright: Copyright {\textcopyright} 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.",
year = "2018",
month = oct,
doi = "10.1002/hec.3782",
language = "English",
volume = "27",
pages = "1513--1532",
journal = "Health Economics",
issn = "1057-9230",
publisher = "John Wiley & Sons",
number = "10",
}
