Financial Impacts of Accessing Paediatric Emergency Services at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital
Keywords:
Cost, Paediatric emergencies, UPTH, Rivers State, Nigeria.Abstract
Background: The economic burden of seeking emergency care could be catastrophic and leave low income households at risk of being impoverished. This situation negates the basic philosophy behind current health system reforms that is aimed at entrenching health equity, social justice, universal access and social health protection for all. This study assessed the cost, economic impact and payment modalities for paediatric emergencies in a tertiary hospital in Nigeria.
Methods: Across sectional survey with pre-tested structured questionnaires administered to 158 careers that were recruited by convenience sampling was utilised. Verifiable information on various health expenditures the during index hospital visit as well as respondents' socio-economic status were collected. Indices for Socio-economic status, catastrophic health expenditure and risk of impoverishment were used to evaluate the economic impact of the current emergency. Appropriate descriptive and inferential analysis were undertaken using SPSS (version 20) statistical software.
Result: Majority (45.6%) of the 158 children were aged 1 - 5years, with girls accounting for 52.5% of the population. The commonest paediatric emergencies were bronchopneumonia 21.5%, diarrhoea disease 20.9% and malaria 14.6%. The mean household earnings from all sources was N101 854 (95% CI: 84965.7, 125,446.4) while the mean monthly household subsistence was N63 028.5 (95%CI: 54 852.7,74 200.1). Mean healthcare expenditure per emergency episode was N17 545.4 (95%CI: 16 058.7,19 690.8) with major contributors being the cost of admission and drugs. Payment at the point of access was almost universal (98.7%). Financial impact of index emergency episode could force 41.8% of household into catastrophic healthcare expenditure or leave 52.5% with the risk of being impoverished.
Conclusion: The cost of accessing paediatric emergencies put a high proportion of uninsured households at risk of being impoverished. We recommend the intensification of efforts at scaling up of the social insurance scheme to cover all household as a means of assuring social health protection for all.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 The Nigerian Health Journal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The Journal is owned, published and copyrighted by the Nigerian Medical Association, River state Branch. The copyright of papers published are vested in the journal and the publisher. In line with our open access policy and the Creative Commons Attribution License policy authors are allowed to share their work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
TNHJ also supports open access archiving of articles published in the journal after three months of publication. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g, in institutional repositories or on their website) within the stated period, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). All requests for permission for open access archiving outside this period should be sent to the editor via email to editor@tnhjph.com.
