General practitioner visiting rates in Ireland by entitlement category.

General practitioner visits reported by 6334 adults in a nationally representative sample of households for 1987 are analysed. Unlike Tussing's study some measures of health status are available and the results show that their omission biases the estimated impact of membership of Entitlement Category I in a regression model upwards. When they are included in the model, though, Category I membership still has a significant positive effect on visiting rates.