[Evaluation of family doctor-centred health care in Germany based on AOK Rheinland/Hamburg claims data].

BACKGROUND: Health insurance funds in Germany are obliged to offer family doctor-centred health care models (Hausarztzentrierte Versorgung, "HzV"). The participation is voluntary for the insured persons. Participants agree to utilise outpatient specialist care only if their family doctor or general practitioner ("gatekeeper") refers them to a specialist. The aim of this programme is to both strengthen the role of general practitioners and to avoid unnecessary specialist visits and double examinations. Moreover, the quality of care should increase and costs decrease. There is a controversial debate among health politicians whether these objectives can be achieved with current HzV contracts. Therefore, the aim of this project was to conduct an economic evaluation of family doctor-centred health care compared with the standard of care.

METHODS: The analysis covered continuously insured adult HzV participants, who have been enrolled in the contract offered by a large German sickness fund (AOK Rheinland/Hamburg) since 2011. In addition, the analysis contained data of a control group which was three times larger than the intervention group. Logistic regression analysis with relevant characteristics (social demographics, health care utilisation, cost, and Charlson Comorbidity Index) of participants and non-participants was conducted to assess the likelihood of participation in the HzV contract. With the subsequent propensity score matching, differences in the characteristics between the control and the intervention group were compensated for the base year 2010 in order to be able to evaluate the influence of the HzV contract in subsequent years. Study objectives were to analyse differences in costs as well as utilisation of services between HzV participants and the control group.

RESULTS: The intervention group consisted of 25,201 HzV participants with an average age of 49.5 years [SD: 17.9]. 54.4% of them were female. The HzV participants showed significantly higher costs compared to the control group in the first and in the second year after enrolment. Drug costs in the first year added up to an average of 499 EUR [SD: 2,021] compared to 477 EUR [SD: 2,050] in the control group. In the second year, the drug costs were 544 EUR [SD: 2,758] in the intervention group and 522 EUR [SD: 2,341] in the control group. In addition, the analysis showed a higher number of specialist referrals issued by general practitioners in the intervention group. However, the length of stay in hospitals was shown to be decreasing for HzV participants.

DISCUSSION: The higher costs and use of services indicate a higher morbidity (Charlson Comorbidity Index and in comparison to the German population) of HzV participants. The cost level increases in both groups, but within the group of HzV participants, the relative cost increase in the second year was lower than in the control group. The results of this study demonstrate that family doctor-centred health care is assumed to be more efficient in the long term. With regard to the objective of these contracts, quality improvement may not be achievable at the same time as cost savings. As our data set cannot distinguish between changes of patient behaviour and physician behaviour, the results of our study need to be interpreted with caution.