Background: The area distribution of physician manpower is an important index of whether or not the hygienic medical services enough, and accessibility of populace medical services. After the National Health Insurance implementation, the main discussion of the relationship between physician manpower and medical focused on the Chinese medical resource, few analyses the ambulatory services,
which the most populace utilized.
Objective: The objective of this study is to study the relationships between the area physician supply and the ambulatory care utilization rate and utilization count. The detail objectives included: 1. to comprehend the quantity and the geographic
distribution of physician manpower in Taiwan; 2. to understand the utilization of ambulatory service among the adults in Taiwan; 3. to analysis the effect of physician supply on ambulatory care utilization; and 4. to discuss the factors which affect the ambulatory services.
Material and Methods: The data of individual characters and ambulatory services utilization was came from the 2002 National Survey on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Health Promotion (HPKAP).The physician-to-population ratios for each area were came from the 2002 Medical Care Manpower Survey in Taiwan compiled by the Department of Health and from the Taiwan-Fukien Demographic
Fact Book published by the Ministry of the Interior, Republic of China. By using the two-part model, we analyses the effect of area medical resource on the medical utilization probability and amount, and using SPSS10.0 as well as the STATA9.0 on the data processing and the statistical analysis.
Results: After controlling for extraneous factors, the effect of the number of area physicians on the probability of ambulatory care utilization by adults was not found to be statistically significant, but there was the statistic significant affect on the frequency of ambulatory care utilization by adults. The frequency of ambulatory care utilization among the median group was found to be higher than
low group by 2.97 times (<0.01).
Conclusion: The effect of the number of area physicians on the number of times of ambulatory care
utilization by adults was found to be statistically significant for the differences, the possible reason is: After the administration of Family Doctors Integrated Delivery System in 2004, the density of the physician-to- population
ratios among the median group, which assigns the just service quantity of doctor and good accessibility for populace. The promotion for medical quality, enhancement of the frequency of ambulatory care
utilization has reused by the populace. But, whether this indicates that people with less medical resources whether they live have paid higher time and transportation costs to obtain the
needed care, decrease the frequency of ambulatory care utilization has reused by the populace. The density of the physician-to-population ratios among the high group have a highly competitive market, which the market structure and the organization characteristic have the negative influence to operation efficiency.
Waiting time for long and visiting time for short, which account poorness for the doctor-patient relationship, and termination of a treatment , this is worth to deserve further investigation for policy formulation.
