Consultations with doctors are, for most people, the most frequent contacts with health services. These consultations can take place either in doctors’ offices or clinics, in hospital outpatient departments or, in some cases, in patients’ own homes.
In 2016, the number of doctor consultations per person per year was highest in the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany, with 10 consultations or more per year. It is lowest in Sweden, Finland and Denmark with less than 5 consultations per person per year ( 7.15). The EU average is 7.5 consultations per person per year, with most countries reporting 5 to 8 visits. Some differences in health service delivery and payment methods can explain some of the variations across countries. In Sweden and Finland, the low number of doctor consultations can be explained partly by the fact that nurses and other health professionals play an important role in primary care centres, lessening the need for consultations with doctors (Maier et al., 2017). Some countries which pay their doctors mainly by fee-for-service (e.g. the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic) tend to have higher consultation rates than other countries where doctors are mainly paid by salaries or capitation.
The estimated number of consultations per doctor is highest in Hungary, the Slovak Republic, Poland and the Czech Republic, with more than 3 000 consultations per doctor per year. It is lowest in Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Finland, with less than 1 500 consultations per doctor per year ( 7.16). This indicator should not be taken as a measure of doctors’ productivity, since consultations can vary in length and effectiveness, and also because it excludes the services doctors deliver for hospital inpatients and other tasks. The duration of consultations with a primary care doctor in Sweden, as reported by doctors themselves, tends to be longer than in other countries such as the Netherlands and Germany (Commonwealth Fund, 2015). However, from a patient’s perspective, a lower proportion of patients in Sweden report that their primary care doctors spent enough time with them in consultation (see indicator on Patient experience in Chapter 6).
Looking at trends over time in the estimated number of consultations per doctor per year, the number has decreased at least slightly since 2000 in Sweden, Denmark, Austria and France, as the number of doctors has increased more rapidly than the number of consultations, whereas it has remained relatively stable in Germany and has increased in Poland but mainly between 2000 and 2008 ( 7.17).
