AIM
We conducted a secondary analysis of the Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of
Primary Care Physicians in order to study and compare the Swiss primary care physicians’ (PCPs)
opinion on the healthcare system in 2012 (n=1025), 2015 (n=1065) and 2019 (n=1’095).
METHODS
Population and data collection
The present survey collects information about the opinion of a nationally representative random
sample of PCPs (internists, paediatricians and general practitioners) from eleven countries on their
respective healthcare systems. The analysis focused on three aspects: the performance of the
healthcare system, the evolution of its quality, and the quantity of medical care provided. The
participants answered the questions using Likert scales.
Statistical analysis
We observed how the three independent variables mentioned above changed in the three Swiss
linguistic regions (the fourth and very small region, the ‘Svizra rumantscha’, is not taken into account),
depending on the gender (limited to male and female), the different age brackets and the practice
location.
First of all, we produced descriptive statistics characterising the occurrence of responses concerning
the performance, the quantity of medical care provided and the quality of the healthcare system in
2012, 2015 and 2019.
Then we carried out a weighted, mixed-effects, ordered logistic regression measuring the association
between the three outcomes and the sociodemographic variables in 2019.
RESULTS
The analysis showed that the PCPs’ opinion on the healthcare system remained relatively constant
from 2012 to 2019, without large differences between the various population groups.
The multivariable modelling revealed that more bad performance was described in the French and the
Italian parts of Switzerland than in the German part. Concerning the evolution of the quality, the age
bracket under 35 reported less degradation than the PCPs aged 65 and more. As for the quantity of
medical care provided, there were fewer women than men who considered it inadequate. In contrast,
younger PCPs reported more inadequate quantity of medical care than the PCPs aged 65 and more.
CONCLUSION
The state of the primary healthcare system is constant since 2012. Different explicative hypotheses are3
discussed in the following study. In 2019, associations between the answers given by the PCPs and
their sociodemographic characteristics were measured.