ArticleCost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E2008
Capacity utilization and the cost of primary care visits: implications for the costs of scaling up health interventions.
Article in Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Estimating the economic burden of invasive non-typhoidalBMJ global health · 2025Pooled it
- Economic evaluations of scaling up strategies of evidence-based health interventions: a systematic review.BMC health services research · 2025Pooled it
- The benefits of investments to combat HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria for primary healthcare from 2000 to 2023: An economic modeling analysis.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Economic burden of recurrent low back pain among working-age adults in Poland: a 3-year retrospective observational analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2026Observational
- Quantifying the Cost ofOpen forum infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Cost of hospital services in India: a multi-site study to inform provider payment rates and Health Technology Assessment.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Economic evaluations of scaling up strategies of evidence-based health interventions: a systematic review protocol.BMJ open · 2021Article
- Health system costs of rheumatic heart disease care in South Africa.BMC public health · 2021Article
- Estimating the Unit Costs of Healthcare Service Delivery in India: Addressing Information Gaps for Price Setting and Health Technology Assessment.Applied health economics and health policy · 2020Article
- Econometric estimation of WHO-CHOICE country-specific costs for inpatient and outpatient health service delivery.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2018Article
- Using Top-down and Bottom-up Costing Approaches in LMICs: The Case for Using Both to Assess the Incremental Costs of New Technologies at Scale.Health economics · 2016Article
- Efficiency of antenatal care and childbirth services in selected primary health care facilities in rural Tanzania: a cross-sectional study.BMC health services research · 2014Article
- Economic analysis of delivering primary health care services through community health workers in 3 North Indian states.PloS one · 2014Article
- Efficiency of primary care in rural Burkina Faso. A two-stage DEA analysis.Health economics review · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveA great deal of international attention has been focussed recently on how much additional funding is required to scale up health interventions to meet global targets such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most of the cost estimates that have been made in response have assumed that unit costs of delivering services will not change as coverage increases or as more and more interventions are delivered together. This is most unlikely. The main objective of this paper is to measure the impact of patient load on the cost per visit at primary health care facilities and the extent to which this would influence estimates of the costs and financial requirements to scale up interventions.
methodsMultivariate regression analysis was used to explore the determinants of variability in unit costs using data for 44 countries with a total of 984 observations.
findingsControlling for other possible determinants, we find that the cost of an outpatient visit is very sensitive to the number of patients seen by providers each day at primary care facilities. Each 1% increase in patient through-put results, on average, in a 27% reduction in the cost per visit (p < 0.0001), which can lead to a difference of up to $30 in the observed costs of an outpatient visit at primary facilities in the same setting, other factors held constant.
conclusionVariability in capacity utilization, therefore, need to be taken into account in cost estimates, and the paper develops a method by which this can be done.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.