ArticleAnnals of family medicine2018
Free Children's Visits and General Practice Attendance.
Article in Annals of family medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- From fees to free: impacts of user fee removal on child health outcomes - a systematic review.International journal for equity in health · 2025Pooled it
- Paediatric attendances of the emergency department in a major Irish tertiary referral centre before and after expansion of free GP care to children under 6: a retrospective observational study.BMJ paediatrics open · 2021Observational
- Article
- A real-time measurement of general practice workload in the Republic of Ireland: a prospective study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2020Article
- How does the introduction of free GP care for children impact on GP service provision? A qualitative study of GPs.Irish journal of medical science · 2019Article
- Factors that influence family and parental preferences and decision making for unscheduled paediatric healthcare: a systematic review protocol.HRB open research · 2019Article
- What effect do point of care fees have on childhood consultations in general practice?BMC health services research · 2018Article
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
purposeIn July 2015, all children aged younger than 6 years gained free access to daytime and out-of-hours general practice services in the Republic of Ireland. Although 30% previously had free access, 70% did not.
methodsTo examine subsequent changes in service use, we retrospectively analyzed anonymized visitation data from 8 general practices in North Dublin providing daytime service and their local out-of-hours service, comparing the 1 year before and the 1 year after introduction of free care.
resultsIn the year after granting of free general practice care for children younger than 6 years, 9.4% more children attended the daytime services and 20.1% more children were seen in the out-of-hours services. Annual number of visits by patients increased by 28.7% for daytime services and by 25.7% for out-of-hours services, translating to 6,682 more visits overall. Average visitation rate for children this age increased from 2.77 visits per year to 3.25 visits per year for daytime services, but changed little for out-of-hours services, from 1.52 visits per year to 1.59 visits per year.
conclusionsOffering free childhood general practice services led to a dramatic increase in visits. This increase has implications for future health care service planning in mixed public and privately funded systems.
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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.