Health care seeking patterns and its implication on health expenditure in Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to estimate the number of ill persons and sources of midical care, to identify factors influencing the probability of seeking medical care, as well as to estimate the amount of expenditure for the outpatients, inpatients in public and private hospital. Secondary data were obtained from two major sources : The 1986 Health and Welfare Survey undertaken by the National Statistics Office and other national data from the National Economic and Social Development Board. Primary data about private hospital was assembled from 7 hospitals, four of them are in Bangkok, the others were in Songkhla, Khonkaen and Chiangrai. The decision making of the ill person to take treatment options were utilized as a dependent variable and number of demographic, socioeconomics factors were regressed on it. The relationship between the dependent variable and the predicting variables was examined by a binary logistic regressional method. The logit result shows that the profession occupation, female, the urban resident, and person and whose who, have a larger family size tended to have a higher probability of receiving modern treatment. Availibility and accessibility factors had significantly strong relation to the probability of seeking treatment. For children age group 0-4, no predictor variables except GPP were related significantly to the probability of seeking treatment. For the other age groups no demographic factors, except family size were related significantly to the probability of seeking treatment. Number of ill persons increased up to the year 2015, resulting in an increase in the medical care expenditure both in public and private sector. The government should encourage the private sector to take a burden of health care provision by improving and relaxing rules an regulations on the role of private health care institutions.