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Patient allocations in general practice in case of patients' preferences for gender of doctor and their unavailability
- Source :
- BMC Research Notes, BMC Research Notes, Vol 4, Iss 1, p 112 (2011)
- Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background: In some countries every citizen has the right to obtain a designated general practitioner. However, each individual may have preferences that cannot be fulfilled due to shortages of some kind. The questions raised in this paper are: To what extent can we expect that preferences are fulfilled when the patients “compete” for entry on the lists of practitioners? What changes can we expect under changing conditions? A particular issue explored in the paper is when the majority of women prefer a female doctor and there is a shortage of female doctors. Findings: The analysis is done on the macro level by the so called gravity model and on the micro level by recent theories of benefit efficient population behaviour, partly developed by two of the authors. A major finding is that the number of patients wanting a doctor of the underrepresented gender is less important than the strength of their preferences as determining factor for the benefit efficient allocation. Conclusions: We were able to generate valuable insights to the questions asked and to the dynamics of benefit efficient allocations. The approach is quite general and can be applied in a variety of contexts.
- Subjects :
- Micro level
medicine.medical_specialty
Population
Alternative medicine
Short Report
lcsh:Medicine
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
medicine
Macro level
education
lcsh:Science (General)
lcsh:QH301-705.5
Medicine(all)
education.field_of_study
Actuarial science
business.industry
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
lcsh:R
General Medicine
Variety (cybernetics)
lcsh:Biology (General)
Family medicine
General practice
Unavailability
business
lcsh:Q1-390
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17560500
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- BMC Research Notes, BMC Research Notes, Vol 4, Iss 1, p 112 (2011)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....121c74e42912f11e95c4b0cd80d8d23c