The Danish welfare system offers free and equal access to health care services to its citizens, however healthcare inequalities is still a rising problem.
The aim of this thesis is to estimate income-related inequality in access to annual checkups at the general practitioner (GP) for patients diagnosed with COPD and type 2 diabetes. In addition, it is the aim of this thesis to identify which efforts can reduce the inequalities in access to health care services.
In order to answer the research question a multiple linear regression has been performed to analyze the influencing factors of annual checkups among patients diagnosed with COPD and type 2-diabetes. Furthermore, concentration indices were used to measure income-related health inequality. I addition, Decomposition analysis was employed to explore the causes of inequality in access to annual checkups at the GP.
The findings indicate a significant income-related health inequality in access to annual checkups favoring the worst-off observed for patients with type 2-diabetes (p<0,05). The decomposition analysis revealed that the main contributors to health inequality in access to annual checkups included age-specific gender, education and comorbidity.
The findings did not indicate any significant income-related health inequalities among patients with COPD but found significant contribution to the inequality from factors as age-specific gender, income and ethnicity. Thus, this thesis concludes that various socioeconomic characteristics affect patients access to annual checkups at the GP.

Further, this thesis finds that the inequality in access to healthcare services for chronic patients can be reduced when the health care system takes ownership in showing care of specially more fragile patients, who is lacking self-care.

This thesis provides recommendations on further research.