Background: Doing “more” in healthcare can be a major threat to the delivery of high-quality health care. It is important to identify the supplier-induced demand of healthcare. This study aims to test supplier-induced demand theory by comparing health care utilization among patients affiliated with healthcare professionals and their counterpart patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals.
Methods: Using cross-sectional data of the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) implemented in 2014, we identified 806 patients affiliated with healthcare professionals and 22788 patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. We used the coarsened exact matching method to control for confounding factors. The main outcomes were outpatient rate and expenditure as well as inpatient rate and expenditure.
Results: The matched outpatient rate of patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals was 0.6% higher (P = .75) than that of their counterparts, and the matched inpatient rate was 1.1% lower (P = .17). Patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals paid significantly more (680 CNY, P < .001) than their counterpart patients did per outpatient visit (1126 CNY [95% CI 885–1368] VS 446 CNY [95% CI 248–643]), while they paid 2,061 CNY insignificant less per inpatient visit (P = .75).
Conclusion: Our results lend support on supplier-induced demand hypothesis and highlight the need for policies to address the large outpatient care expenses of patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. Creating incentives for providers to offer less avoidable healthcare service during outpatient visits may work to reduce healthcare costs.

Figure 1
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Background: Doing “more” in healthcare can be a major threat to the delivery of high-quality health care. It is important to identify the supplier-induced demand of healthcare. This study aims to test supplier-induced demand theory by comparing health care utilization among patients affiliated with healthcare professionals and their counterpart patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals.
Methods: Using cross-sectional data of the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) implemented in 2014, we identified 806 patients affiliated with healthcare professionals and 22788 patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. We used the coarsened exact matching method to control for confounding factors. The main outcomes were outpatient rate and expenditure as well as inpatient rate and expenditure.
Results: The matched outpatient rate of patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals was 0.6% higher (P = .75) than that of their counterparts, and the matched inpatient rate was 1.1% lower (P = .17). Patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals paid significantly more (680 CNY, P < .001) than their counterpart patients did per outpatient visit (1126 CNY [95% CI 885–1368] VS 446 CNY [95% CI 248–643]), while they paid 2,061 CNY insignificant less per inpatient visit (P = .75).
Conclusion: Our results lend support on supplier-induced demand hypothesis and highlight the need for policies to address the large outpatient care expenses of patients not affiliated with healthcare professionals. Creating incentives for providers to offer less avoidable healthcare service during outpatient visits may work to reduce healthcare costs.

Figure 1
This is a list of supplementary files associated with this preprint. Click to download.
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