Research On Resident's Outpatient Service Expenditure And Equity In Weihai City

Researches on inpatient service expenditure have been conducted domestic and abroad, but there are quite few researches on outpatient service expenditure. In fact, outpatient service expenditure account for 60% of total service expenditure. Diversified measures have been taken to control the irrational rising of medical expenditure, however, the expenditure is still going up, and it has become a focus of social attention. The goal of building a well-off society in an all-round way was put forward by the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The goal involves the objectives of health care system and indicators of health equity. The research level of health equity is a symbol of social development. The article dictates equity in resident's outpatient service expenditure and its affecting factors in Weihai city through surveying outpatient service expenditure of different income population, providing basis for health reform and health resouce allocation.Stratum-based random sampling method was used to select samples. The survey covered 8074 households and 20409 persons. After data collection, investigators from Institute of Social Medicine and Health Management, Shandong University combed and coded all the questionaires. SPSS 10.0 software package was used to analyze the data.The main contents include: (1) The general information of households, such as gender, age, marriage, education, employment etc. (2) The information about falling ill and service seeking behavior in the last two weeks before survey, including times of seeking medical service, the expenditures, category of hospitals and so on.(3) The information and the reasons for un-hospitalization as well as self-medical treatment in the last two weeks before survey.Main results: 1. The resident's outpatient service expenditure and its affecting factors: (1) The rate of outpatient service seeking within two weeks is 5.2%, 56.8% patients didn't seek services, the self-medical treatment covered 84.1% in the non-consultant patient. (2) 65.3% patients seek services from township hospitals and village clinics.(3) The result of multi-factor analysis showed that the factors affecting outpatient service expenditure are education level, employment, health insurance, income level etc. 2. Equity in outpatient service expenditure(1) The concentration index was positive number for city and negative for country(2) No matter in city or in country, it all showed a decline trend for per average outpatient expenditure occupying per capita income.Conclusion and suggestion: 1. It was inequitable in outpatient expenditure in city residents. 2. It was also inequitable in outpatient expenditure in country residents. 3. Building and perfecting the medical guarantee system in impoverished crowd of urban and rural areas. 4. Strengthening and developing the community hygiene service. 5. Building the right idea about equity and handling the relationship between equity and efficiency appropriately.