FACTORS AFFECTING HEALTH CARE UTILIZATION AMONG ELDERLY PEOPLE IN RURAL AREAS IN BAYANNAOER CITY, INNER MONGOLIA, CHINA

Abstract

The research topic focuses on factors affecting health care utilization among elderly people in the rural areas of one prefecture level city in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, namely Bayannaoer City. This study uses data from a cross sectional survey, conducted by the China Medical Board, Inner Mongolia Medical University, in 2014. 1233 elderly people from 766 households were included, association between predisposing, enabling, and need factors and rural elderly people’s health care utilization, was analyzed using zero-truncated Poisson regression and zero-inflated Poisson regression model with OPD services utilization and IPD services utilization as dependent variable respectively. OPD services utilization includes the use of health care services at village clinics, township clinics and county hospitals. Among elderly people, higher outpatient services utilization is associated with being male, married, educated, smoking, lower out-of-pocket expenditure, and poor perceived physical condition. Inpatient services utilization is not associated with gender, age, education, total household gross-income in this study. Smoking may cause higher IPD services utilization. Government should increase reimbursement rate, provide medical subsidy and set up funding for poor or elderly people, creating a continuum of quit educational among elderly is better for elderly people’s health care utilization.