Why do family doctors (not) signal?

Opportunities and limitations of the collaboration between family doctors and social service providers

Abstract

Public health and social welfare subsystems are principally lin ked together by mutual interest in the basic care of elderly people. Family doctor services are parts of the social signalizing system that promotes revealing unprovided needs. On the other hand, taking indigents into social care would make considerably easier the work of family doctors. As a consequence of this family doctors’ signalizing should be a general practice everywhere. But social specialists experience the contrary. In order to explain the difference between the unity of interest in principle, and the weak collaboration in reality, a theoretical model was elaborated and tested empirically. We have found that social service providers’ preferences are not evident for family doctors, therefore, their willingness to signalize depends on their opportunity of obtaining information.