Inequality of access to health care among the urban elderly in northwestern China

Juhua Luo, Xiulan Zhang, Chenggang Jin and Dongmin Wang

Health Policy, 2009, vol. 93, issue 2-3, 111-117

Abstract: Objective The purpose of this study was to examine inequalities of access to health care among the urban elderly in northwestern China.Methods 4441 seniors (over 60 years of age) were drawn from a cross-sectional study conducted in three northwestern Chinese cities. The effects of these factors on the use of health care services (visits to physician and hospitalizations) were estimated using multiple binomial regressions.Results Overall, 7.6% of the population studied had visited a physician during the past 4 weeks, 10.1% had used inpatient care during the past year, and 7.6% did not use inpatient services despite being referred by doctors for hospital admission during the previous year. Both visits to a physician and non-hospitalization were independently associated with the place of residence and household per capita income; the use of inpatient care services was significantly lower among those with less education, those with lower household per capita income and those without health insurance coverage. Women tended to make more use of outpatient services, but spent less time and money in hospital than men.Conclusion Our findings indicate a significant inequality of access to health care services among urban seniors in northwestern China. More appropriate health care policies should be developed to achieve the goal of greater equality of access to health care services for all.

Keywords: Elderly; health; Health; care; utilization; Access; to; health; care; Equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168-8510(09)00161-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:93:y:2009:i:2-3:p:111-117

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().