"Unmet need became less evident from May through to July 2020. For example, outpatient consultations increased from 47 per cent in April to 63 percent in June, following the easing of lockdown. About 70 per cent of those who needed outpatient care had access to it in July, after the complete easing of the first lockdown on July 4.
"When it comes to the relationship between people's use of healthcare and their income, we found that despite high levels of unmet need, people of all incomes had equal access to the hospital care that was provided. But we found that more well-off people had better access to GP consultations, prescriptions and medical helplines at the peak of the first wave.
"In a publicly funded health care system, pro-rich inequity in health care use may be because people on lower low-incomes are heavily time-constrained, due to harsher employment and living arrangements, and may be less able to seek the health care they need. But we found that this inequality was reduced as the pandemic progressed.
"However, we found persistent pro-rich inequities for services that may be related to people's ability to pay, such as over the counter medications and advice from community pharmacists," he added.
'Unmet health care need and income-related horizontal equity in use of health care during the COVID-19 pandemic' is published in Health Economics. The paper is co-authored by Dr Apostolos Davillas (UEA) and Prof Andrew M. Jones (University of York).
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