Unmet Needs for Primary Care in a Context of Universal Healthcare System: The Case of Québec

Hani A. Guend, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (CIED)

Referring to the behavioural model of access to healthcare as conceptual framework, we analyse self-reported unmet needs for care in Québec with special focus on elderly population. We characterise the socioeconomic and physical environments of health regions using Canada’s census 2001 data. We use the 2003 wave of the CCHS data to create a dataset suitable for multi-level statistical analysis. We fit a series of logistic regression models to the data, the outcome variables being unmet needs for routine healthcare. A salient feature of social life in Québec is an integrating social policy that warrants universal coverage of necessary medical care needs. This setting is suitable for testing hypotheses about non-financial barriers to access. We expect this study to yield results that point to interesting paths for further investigations.