Investigation on inpatient service utilization by disease caused poor rural families in three counties / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To reveal inpatient service utilization and medical burden in disease-caused poor rural families,for policy references.Methods By means of convenience sampling method,face-toface interview was made to inpatients from such families in Miyi County of Sichuan Province,Binhai County of Jiangsu Province and Xingtai County of Hebei Province.Results Totally 453 effective questionnaires were collected,with an effective rate of 96.7％.Respondents feature low income and fund raising capability,while 75.3％ of them pay their inpatient costs out-of-pocket,17.7％ pay with loans from others and 7.1％ pay by financial assistance from relatives;but they tend to go to higher level hospitals and have higher financial burdens for diseases.Conclusions Rural hospitalization resources should be optimized and integrated,levels of the New Rural Cooperative Medical System be improved,the catastrophic health care system be perfected and the health insurance coverage be gradually expanded for the low-income and marginalized population.