Remarks

The data was collected for the Eurostat European Community Household Panel (ECHP) carried out during the period 1996-2001. The data refer to the average number of patient contacts to General Practitioners (GP) within a calendar year.

Comparison of GP utilisation between countries has some limitations since in some countries the GP has much more of a gatekeeping function than in others. In nine of 18 European countries described in Kroneman et al., the GP has an explicit gatekeeping role: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Norway, United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. In nine other countries (Luxemburg, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Sweden, Iceland and Greece) direct access to most other services is possible (Kroneman et al., 2006).