Access to healthcare

Relevance/Result

Access to healthcare is an extremely relevant indicator of integration. Many barriers can impede access, such as a general lack of knowledge about health institutions, linguistic barriers or a lack of connections. This indicator primarily examines impeded access to medical and dental care due to financial reasons. The lack of access to dental care is of particular interest as this type of service is in most cases paid for by patients. This is in contrast to general medical care, which is reimbursed by the basic health insurance.

In 2018, overall, a statistically significant difference between the population with a migration background from the first generation and the population without a migration background could be observed in the percentage of people who went without access to dental care (5% compared with 2%). The difference between the second or subsequent generations and the population with no migration background is not significant.

As far as medical care was concerned, the difference between the population with a migration background and that without a migration background was not statistically significant.

Trends over time

From 2015 to 2018, there was no significant change in the percentage of people with a migration background who went without medical or dental care for financial reasons, regardless of generation.

Major region

Regardless of the major region, results by migration status do not differ significantly with respect to deprivation of dental or medical care for financial reasons.

Definitions
Methodologies

Percentage of people who went without dental or medical care due to financial reasons.

Following changes to the survey framework and improvements in the weighting model, results from 2014 on can no longer be directly compared with those from previous years (series break).

At the request of Eurostat the questions regarding lack of access to healthcare were revised in 2015. The main change is that persons are now questioned about the necessity of medical (or dental) treatment prior to being asked if they have always been able to have access to the necessary examinations or treatment. This means that from 2015, only people who said they really needed an examination or treatment and who did not have access to such care were asked for the main reason for not consulting. As previously, when the main reason is financial, the person is considered to be subject to a lack of access to healthcare.

You can access the indicators in one of the following ways

All indicators

Some 68 indicators describe the current situation and changes in the integration of the population with a migration background and/or of foreign nationals in Switzerland in eleven areas of life in our society.

Key indicators

34 key indicators provide an overview of the progress made on the journey towards integration and the state of integration of the population with a migration background. If this information is lacking, the population is shown by nationality, and where this variable is available, the country of birth.