ArticleInternational journal for equity in health2022
Waiting times in healthcare: equal treatment for equal need?
Article in International journal for equity in health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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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
19 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Health Status And Delays In Referral-To-Treatment Waiting Times for Elective Admissions of Adults From Deprived Areas And Ethnic Minority Backgrounds: A Study of Healthcare Inequalities.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Comparison of the factors influencing the patients' waiting time between two healthcare facilities with and without health management information system in Hyderabad: a cross-sectional study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Diagnosis-Related group payment and its impact on hospitalization costs and patient financial protection for neurointerventional stroke care in a Chinese tertiary hospital: a retrospective analysis.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2026Article
- MRI Waiting Time Disparities in Saudi Public Hospitals: A Six-Year Retrospective Study.Cureus · 2026Article
- A Manifesto for Universal Healthcare: Reconstituting Primary Care Through Digital Innovation, Microbial Technologies and Empowered Citizenship.Microbial biotechnology · 2026Article
- The Battle for Beds before Health: Unpacking the Crisis of Healthcare in Ghana's Low-Income Communities.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2026Article
- Perceptions of public and private health services in Poland: findings from a 2025 nationwide survey.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Unequal Regional Access to ACL Reconstruction in Romania: A Nationwide Epidemiologic Assessment (2017-2023).Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- Article
- Nationwide Trends in Arthroscopic Knee Surgery and ACL Reconstruction in Romania, 2017-2023: Insights from a Seven-Year Health System Analysis.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Social and health determinants of wait times for primary care in Canada.Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien · 2025Article
- REFERRAL WAIT TIME AND ILLNESS SEVERITY OF PATIENTS WITH NONCOMMUNICABLE DISEASES REFERRED TO SPECIALIST CLINICS OF A TERTIARY HEALTHCARE CENTRE IN SOUTH-WEST NIGERIA.Annals of Ibadan postgraduate medicine · 2025Article
- Gender-specific changes in vision-related quality of life over time - results from the population-based Gutenberg Health Study.Graefe's archive for clinical and experimental ophthalmology = Albrecht von Graefes Archiv fur klinische und experimentelle Ophthalmologie · 2025Observational
- Wait Times for Psychiatric Specialist Services in Australia.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- The Quality of Short Videos as a Source of Coronary Heart Disease Information on TikTok: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Antenatal care services in Benin and Tanzania 2021/2022: an equity analysis study.BMJ public health · 2024Article
- Utilization of Proximate Healthcare Facilities and Children's Wait Times in Senegal: An IV-Tobit Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- TikTok video as a health education source of information on heart failure in China: a content analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Factors influencing women's satisfaction with well-woman services at the Manhyia Government Hospital, Ghana.Women's health (London, England)Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn many universal health systems, waiting times act as a non-monetary rationing mechanism, one that should be based on clinical need rather than the ability to pay. However, there is growing evidence that among patients with similar levels of need, waiting times often differ according to socioeconomic status. The mechanisms underlying inequality in access remain unclear.
methodsUsing data for Spain, we study whether waiting times for primary and specialist care depend on patients' socioeconomic status (SES). Additionally, we make use of the continuous nature of our data to explore whether the SES-related differences in waiting times found for specialist consultations vary among different points of the waiting time distribution.
resultsOur results reveal the presence of a SES gradient in waiting times for specialist services explained on the basis of education, employment status and income. In addition, for primary care, we found evidence of a slightly more moderate SES gradient mostly based on employment status. Furthermore, although quantile regression estimates indicated the presence of a SES gradient within the distribution of waiting times for specialist visits, the SES differences attenuated in the context of longer waiting times in the public sector but did not disappear.
conclusionOur findings suggest the principle of equal treatment for equal need, assumed to be inherent to national health systems such as the Spanish system, is not applied in practice. Determining the mechanism(s) underlying this selective barrier to healthcare is of crucial importance for policymakers, especially in the current COVID-19 health and economic crises, which could exacerbate these inequalities as increasing numbers of treatments are having to be postponed.
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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.