Factors related to treatment intensity in Swiss primary care

Table 1 Structure of hierarchical linear models

Type of variable	Description
Outcome	Number of annual physician consultations
Explanatory variables
- Level I (physician)	Model 1: Number of patients treated in 2004 ^a.
	Model 2: 4 indicator variables (P_Q1 – P_Q4) representing quartiles of the number of patients treated in 2004^a
	Physician gender
	Physician age
	Professional qualification^b
	Average patient age
	Proportion of female patient consultations
- Level II (service area)	Number of PCP's per 10,000 inhabitants
	Number of specialists^c per 10,000 inhabitants
	Presence of a hospital providing ambulatory services (coded as a binary variable with 0 for no hospital and 1 for at least one hospital).
	Number of deaths per 1000 inhabitants (mortality)

^a See Table 4 for results of model 1 and 2.
^b Board certification of the Swiss Medical Association (family medicine, general internal medicine, general practitioners without board certification).
^c Physicians providing ambulatory care but not classified as primary care provider (board certification in other medical disciplines)

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