Background: No financial protection in
health has been recognized as a disease in healthcare systems. Some families
suffer from poverty, disease, and catastrophic expenditure .In this study we
have tried to measure the catastrophic expenditures of health services and
effective indicators on them.
Materials and Methods: This was a cross sectional study
and the information of 384 families who were supported by Torbat Heydarieh University
of Medical Science were collected. Data
collection tool was a questionnaire the validity and reliability of which were confirmed.
Incidence of catastrophic health care expenditures were calculated based on WHO
methods, and Stata version 11 software was also used for data analysis.
Results: The rate of households facing
catastrophic healthcare expenditures was 6.77 %. The use of daycare services
had the highest proportion of the expenditure which had a significant
relationship with the occurrence of catastrophic healthcare expenditures.
Catastrophic healthcare expenditures had a significant relationship with the
number of family members, the existence of a 65 or older family member, he use
of medicines, and diagnostic tests.
Conclusions: The use of health services, the
existence of children under the age 5 in the family, and large family size
increase catastrophic health expenditures. These variables should be taken into
consideration by policy makers to have an agenda in Fifth National Development
Plan, aiming to achieve 1% incidence of crippling cost of health.
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