<p> This study was conducted to identify the driving factors that affect primary care utilization. It hypothesizes that the cost of treatment is the driving factor that affects a patient's decision to seek medical care from their primary care physician. Furthermore, it also hypothesizes that the uncomfortable conversation with the physician, the concern of someone else finding out about the patient's personal health problems, and the trouble of making an appointment are three independent factors that do not affect primary care utilization. In order to test these hypotheses, secondary data from the CHIS 2009 was collected and analyzed. Unfortunately, the data sets concerning these three independents variables were not released as they were classified to contain confidential data. As a result, healthcare coverage and emergency care utilization were served as proxy variables and were used instead to determine the factors associated with primary care utilization. Statistical analysis of these proxy variables indicates that primary care utilization is associated with health insurance coverage and emergency care utilization.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:1523084 |
| Date | 09 August 2013 |
| Creators | Ninh, Teresa T. |
| Publisher | California State University, Long Beach |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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