Petrou Panagiotis
Health Care Management Programme, Open University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Health Insurance Organization, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Appl Health Econ Health Policy. 2015 Oct;13(5):515-23. doi: 10.1007/s40258-015-0169-2.
A co-payment fee of EUR10 was introduced in Cyprus, in order to cope with overcrowding of emergency room services. The scope of this paper is the assessment of the short-term impact of this measure.
We used an interrupted time-series autoregressive integrated moving average model, and we analyzed official data from Cyprus' largest emergency room facility for three years.
Co-payment is associated with a 16% statistically significant reduction of emergency room visits. No impact was observed in categories of teenagers, children, infants, and people over 70 years old.
Co-payment was proven to be effective in Cyprus' emergency room setting and is expected to lessen congestion in the emergency room. The price insensitivity of people aged over 70 years, teenagers, children and infants, merits additional research for the identification of the underlying reasons.
塞浦路斯引入了10欧元的自付费用，以应对急诊室服务过度拥挤的问题。本文的范围是评估这一措施的短期影响。
我们使用了中断时间序列自回归积分移动平均模型，并分析了塞浦路斯最大的急诊室设施三年的官方数据。
自付费用与急诊室就诊人数在统计学上显著减少16%相关。在青少年、儿童、婴儿和70岁以上人群中未观察到影响。
自付费用在塞浦路斯的急诊室环境中被证明是有效的，预计将减轻急诊室的拥堵。70岁以上人群、青少年、儿童和婴儿对价格不敏感，值得进一步研究以确定其潜在原因。
