Free Children's Visits and General Practice Attendance

Purpose: In July 2015, all children aged younger than 6 years gained free access to daytime and out-of-hours general practice services in the Republic of Ireland. Although 30% previously had free access, 70% did not.

Methods: To examine subsequent changes in service use, we retrospectively analyzed anonymized visitation data from 8 general practices in North Dublin providing daytime service and their local out-of-hours service, comparing the 1 year before and the 1 year after introduction of free care.

Results: In the year after granting of free general practice care for children younger than 6 years, 9.4% more children attended the daytime services and 20.1% more children were seen in the out-of-hours services. Annual number of visits by patients increased by 28.7% for daytime services and by 25.7% for out-of-hours services, translating to 6,682 more visits overall. Average visitation rate for children this age increased from 2.77 visits per year to 3.25 visits per year for daytime services, but changed little for out-of-hours services, from 1.52 visits per year to 1.59 visits per year.

Conclusions: Offering free childhood general practice services led to a dramatic increase in visits. This increase has implications for future health care service planning in mixed public and privately funded systems.