The Research On Health Services Demand And Utilization Among Aged Population In Main Urban Area Of Chongqing

BACKGROUNDPopulation aging has become a serious social and economic problem in the 21st century.China became one of the aging countries in 1999 with the largest senior population all over the world. Population aging has already affected economy and society severely.With prolonging of average life expectancy, the problem of seniors'health condition and long term-guard become more and more obvious.Therefore, it is quite necessary for us to explore how to provide fairer basic health services and make good use of limited health-resources for comforting seniors'health need with completed system.OBJECTIVESInvestigate seniors over 60 in main urban area of Chongqing and find out their health service needs and utilization, analyze its affecting factors, then find out existing problems and provide some suggestions and countermeasures in order to do something beneficial for seniors'health.METHODS723 city and village residents living in main urban area of Chongqing were extracted effectively with multiple stage sampling method. We investigated them on their health in their homes. The investigation contains residents'social demography character, two- week prevalence, visiting rate and hospitalization rate as well as chronic illness prevalence. Analyze their influencing factors,condition of physician contact, reasons of non-physician contact by Chi-square test(χ2 test). The results are devoted to evaluate the health service need and utilization influence factors. Meanwhile, with the application of multiple logistic regression model, numerous influence factors of seniors'health service demands and utilization was analyzed.RESULTS(1)The contradiction of seniors'low income and high expenditure for health care was very obvious.Compared with urban people, the contradiction became more significant.(2)Seniors who live in main urban area of Chongqing own higher two-week prevalence rate than the average people in Chongqing. Hypertension, osteoarthrosis and coronary heart disease took the top three places of diseases.(3)No matter in rural or urban areas,primary health care institutions would attract most seniors who sought for health care. The main reasons why seniors sought for health care in these institutions in turn was accepted quality of health care service, short distance from home and reasonable prices. (4)The proportion of seniors who were sick but did not visit doctors was comparely high. Financial constrains was the main cause.(5)Major factors which were associate with the utilization of health care services were age, income, Engel Coefficient ,chronic diseases and health insurance.POLICY SUGGESTIONSThe health education work for seniors should be launched in order to enhance their health consciousness; pay more attention to seniors'demands of the prevention and curing of chronic disease and health service; continuously improve seniors'community health care systems and explore the suitable model for their health care for perfecting social health insurance system. The society should pay attention to the health demands of seniors.