Utilization of General Practitioners: A Comparison of Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Older Canadians

This paper uses data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey to compare the utilization of general practitioners by elderly immigrants to that of Canadian-born elderly people. The study employs count data regression methods to take into account that the number of visits to general practitioners is a non-negative integer variable. The study estimates models using the overall sample as well as subsamples of males and females separately. The results suggest that there is no significant difference between elderly immigrants and Canadian-born seniors in their utilization of general practitioners.