Sammanfattning
As part of the Norwegian Coordination Reform of 2012, municipal co-payment of general hospital
admissions was introduced. The co-payment was implemented for medical specialist services
whereas surgical treatment was exempted. We investigate whether municipal co-payment did have
effects on the use of specialized health care services. The hypothesis is that when a municipality
must contribute to payment for the treatment of patients from the municipality, they will implement
measures to reduce the use of the relevant specialist health care services. Data include individual
level information on the entire population of Norway for the period 2010-2013. In addition to the use of
specialist somatic health care services, we include information on consultations with private
specialists, general practitioners and physiotherapists, as well as individual level patient
characteristics. Data are collected from different registers at Statistics Norway. We analyse whether
the probability of visits to somatic treatment hospitals has changed due to the reform. Analyses
based on descriptive statistics and regression analyses give no indications that use of specialist
somatic health care services have changed as a result of municipal co-payment of these services.