Introduction
Why look at the determinants of doctor visits? Knowledge about the determinants of healthcare use is important to manage healthcare use, and to avoid its misuse as well as over- and under-use. To date, most studies examining the determinants of healthcare use refer to the widely-applied Andersen model. This model distinguishes between predisposing characteristics (such as sex or age), enabling resources (such as income or status of health insurance), and need factors (such as self-rated health or chronic conditions). A systematic review published in 2012 showed that need factors are important determining factors for individual healthcare service use.1 However, it appears plausible that other factors are also important, such as (1) personality characteristics (for example, neuroticism), or (2) psychosocial factors like loneliness (the state in which a person’s social network is smaller or less satisfying than desired), or life satisfaction (cognitive evaluation of life as a whole).
Recent findings
Let’s take a closer look at some recent findings. Adjusting for various covariates included in the Andersen model, it was shown that personality factors, such as extraversion and neuroticism, are related to physician visit rates in the US and Germany.2,3 Extraverted individuals are, for example, talkative, …