Physical activity and health care utilization in romania

For all EU countries, regardless of the type of health care system, managing the increase of health services costs is a medium- and long-term strategic objective. To support this approach, it is a priority to analyze the health needs of population, the types and frequency of the demand for health services, the factors that determine the structure and dynamics of health care utilization, the profile of people using the health system, etc. Equally, it is important to study the ways and possibilities of reducing health expenditures by using various tools that can be made available to citizens. Such an instrument is the regular practice of physical activity by all categories of population. Based on this background, the aim of our study is to analyze the relationship between physical activity and health care utilization for a Romanian representative sample. The data was retrieved from the second wave of the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) 2014. The relationship between physical activity and the use of each type of health care services was evaluated by means of incidence rate ratios (IRR) obtained through negative binomial regression models. Our main findings show that physical activity level is negatively associated with the amount of health care utilization, suggesting that, on average, high and moderately active people use significantly fewer health care services compared with low active people.