Determinants of Medical Care Utilization

This study is an analysis of patient and physician characteristics that are related to failure of patients to keep an appointment in a prepaid, multispecialty group practice. There was a high relationship between the frequency of appointments and the frequency of appointment failures, leading to the conclusion that the probability of failures is relatively equal across appointments. High medical care utilizers, therefore, were most likely to have failures. Demographic and psychosocial patient characteristics, as well as physician characteristics, were of much less significance in determining patient failures to keep appointments. The medically indigent have a significantly higher rate of appointment failures which suggests that studies of appointment failures, when dealing with medically indigent populations, may have limited pertinence to other population groups.