TY - JOUR T1 - Addressing inequalities in medical workforce distribution: evidence from a quasi-experimental study in Brazil JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001827 VL - 4 IS - 6 SP - e001827 AU - Elisa Maria Maffioli AU - Thiago Augusto Hernandes Rocha AU - Gabriel Vivas AU - Carlos Rosales AU - Catherine Staton AU - Joao Ricardo Nickenig Vissoci Y1 - 2019/11/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/4/6/e001827.abstract N2 - Background Brazil faces huge health inequality challenges since not all municipalities have access to primary care physicians. The More Doctors Programme (MDP), which started in 2013, was born out of this recognition, providing more than 18 000 doctors in the first few years. However, the programme faced a restructuring at the end of 2018.Methods We construct a panel municipality-level data between 2008 and 2017 for 5570 municipalities in Brazil. We employ a difference-in-differences empirical approach, combined with propensity score matching, to study the impacts of the programme on hospitalisations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions and its costs. We explore heterogeneous impacts by age of the patients, type of admissions, and municipalities that were given priority.Findings The MDP reduced ambulatory admissions by 2.9 per cent (p value <0.10) and the costs by 3.7 per cent (p value <0.01) over the mean. The reduction was driven by infectious gastroenteritis, bacterial pneumonias, asthma, kidney and urinary infections, and pelvic inflammatory disease. The results held on the subsample of municipalities targeted by the programme. By comparing the benefits of the programme from the reduction in the costs of ambulatory admissions to the total financial costs of the MDP, the impacts allowed the government to save at least BRL 27.88 (US$ 6.9 million) between 2014 and 2017.Conclusion Addressing inequalities in the distribution of the medical workforce remains a global challenge. Our results inform the discussion on the current strategy adopted in Brazil to increase access to primary healthcare in underserved areas. ER -