(199) Comparison of sociodemographic factors, health care utilisation by general practitioner visits and somatic hospital admissions, and medication use in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark

Publication Number: 860

Background: The Scandinavian countries’ health care systems all inform nationwide registers. The populations of these countries are increasingly combined in register-based research because the Scandinavian countries are viewed as having similar sociodemography and health care systems – but do they?

Objectives: We aimed to compare the three populations of Norway (NO), Sweden (SE), and Denmark (DK) regarding sociodemographic factors, health care and medication utilisation.

Methods: We obtained descriptive, aggregate data from publicly accessible sources: Nordic Statistics database (all), Statistics Norway and Norwegian Prescription database (NO), Socialstyrelsen (SE), and Statbank Denmark and Medstat.dk (DK). These sources hold aggregate statistics from the nationwide registers comprising all citizens within each country and all health care and medication use in the tax-financed public health care systems. We calculated country-specific statistics on sociodemographic factors, health care use by general practitioner visits and somatic admission diagnoses at hospitals, and medication utilisation as well as means and coefficients of variation (CV) across countries.

Results: In 2018, population totals were 5 295 619 (NO), 10 120 242 (SE), and 5 781 190 (DK). The three populations were similar regarding sex, age, education, and income distribution. Overall, medication use was similar across countries with larger variation in health care utilisation. For example, per 1,000 inhabitants 703 (NO), 665 (SE), and 711 (DK) redeemed a prescription (CV 0.035) whereas there were 215 (NO), 143 (SE), and 231 (DK) somatic hospital admissions per 1,000 inhabitants (CV 0.238). General practitioner contacts per 1,000 inhabitants were 7,082 in DK and and 5,773 in Norway (CV 0.144) (data unavailable for Sweden).

Conclusions: The Scandinavian countries are comparable regarding aggregate-level sociodemographic factors and medication use. However, variations were noted in health care utilisation as measured by visits to general practitioners and somatic admission to hospitals. This variation may reflect differences in the infrastructure of the three health care systems rather than differences in clinical practice. For instance, we did not include health care use in private practicing specialists outside the hospitals which may vary between the three countries. Regardless, this variation in registered health care utilisation should be considered when pooling Scandinavian health care data.