title: Disparities in health care utilization by smoking status in Canada.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine the association between smoking status and the utilization of health care services in Canada.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study uses data from the 2007 Canadian Community Health Survey, which contains information on the number of visits to general practitioner (GP), specialists (SP) and the number of nights spent in a hospital. The finite mixture estimation method is used in order to account for heterogeneity among smokers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Multivariate regression results indicate differential effects of smoking on health care utilization for at least two different groups of health care users: low and high users. In particular, we find that among the low-use group, smokers use less GP and SP services than never smokers. However, for the low-use and high-use groups, smokers have more hospitalizations than never smokers. The incidence of hospitalization is higher for the low-use group after controlling for need, socio-demographic characteristics and province fixed effects. Former smokers who recently quit use more health care services.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Tobacco consumption elevates the use of health care services, especially among the high-use group.
authors: Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Centre for Clinical Research, Dalhousie University, 5790 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, Canada, s.azagba@dal.ca.
authors: Sunday
authors: S
authors: Azagba
authors: Mesbah Fathy
authors: MF
authors: Sharaf
authors: Christina
authors: C
authors: Xiao Liu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D054625:Healthcare Disparities / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult