The role of parental health care utilization in children’s unnecessary utilization in China: evidence from Shaanxi province

Table 1 Description of dependent variables

Dependent variable	Explanation
Outpatient visit	An outpatient visit was defined in the survey as a patient visit to hospital outpatient facilities in a day and included pharmaceuticals, physician visits, and outpatient surgery (excluding routine well-child visits such as general checkups and immunizations). The leading causes of outpatient visits among the surveyed children in the past 2 weeks were: common cold, upper respiratory tract infection, and influenza.
Infusion	The infusion variable was identified as being conditional on having an outpatient visit. The leading causes of obtaining infusion during outpatient visits in the past 2 weeks were: upper respiratory tract infection, common cold, and influenza.
Inpatient visit	An inpatient visit was defined as a patient visit which resulted in overnight hospitalization. The leading causes of inpatient visits among the surveyed children in the last year included: upper respiratory tract infection, pneumonia, and acute nasopharyngitis.

Note: Following previous studies on the utilization of health care services, self-reported responses were used in this study. The period of recall was 2 weeks for outpatient utilization and one year for inpatient utilization in the NHSS. Although one disadvantage of using self-reported data is that they are subject to reporting bias, using a relatively short recall period would help reduce the likelihood of recall error [64]

ISSN: 1475-9276