Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Chi-squared test and logistic regression analysis were carried out to explore if socioeconomic characteristics, health status, or residence were associated with waiting times and the perception of waiting time as a problem.
One-third of respondents waited more than a month to get an appointment with a public specialist. Further investigation is needed to better understand potential inequities affecting people in worse health status. Across the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD countries, waiting times have been of interest for several years given their link with quality of care [ 1 ], including better care experiences and patient satisfaction [ 2 ].
In the last 15 years, many policies sought a meaningful decrease in waiting time across key services within the health care system, such as the introduction of maximum waiting time guarantees, the opportunity of being treated at another provider including abroad if waiting time limits are exceeded, and novel financing mechanisms [ 3 , 4 ]. Early international comparisons of waiting times across OECD countries were focused on elective hospital care, but in recent years this interest has broadened by considering ambulatory care [ 3 ].
Hungary has a single payer, social insurance-based health care system with universal access [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Primary care is organized mainly through family doctors who are private entrepreneurs, and thus have decision power on how to best adapt their organization to its context and setting [ 8 ], including the ability to invest in information and communication technology infrastructure and software. The currently prevailing culture is one of service users and family doctors who are familiarized with an unscheduled approach to appointments, which is supported by the widely accepted standard practice of being seen by a family doctor on the same day.
A referral system is in place for accessing secondary and tertiary care in the public sector; without a valid referral by a family doctor, the user may be asked to pay an out-of-pocket fee. Referral from a family doctor is compulsory for some specialties e. Thus far, Hungary has not yet implemented a scheme to monitor waiting times across the health care system at large. Therefore, such information on waiting times is not available on a system level. Literature on waiting times in Hungary is scarce and focused on specific services and diseases [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ].
