Nguyen, Khang. A study on hospital expenditure for aged population in Vietnam . Master's Degree(Population and Reproductive Health Research). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2004.
A study on hospital expenditure for aged population in Vietnam
Abstract:
This study is a descriptive, cross-sectional study of health care expenditure of the
elderly in Vietnam. The unit cost for health care expenditure for the elderly in
Vietnam and a health care projection for the elderly for the period 2004-2024 were
investigated and a possible solution to ensure the accessibility to health care services
for the elderly when they get sick or ill was described. The sample included 1222
patient records at all hospital levels from 2002 and 394 patient records from 2003, but
only at one central level hospital. Descriptive analysis were used to explore the data
and obtain the following results.
The average health care expenditure for the group aged 60-74 was 312.000 VND
(about 20 USD) and the figure for the group aged 75 and over was 355.000 VND
(about 23 USD). This amount of money is about 1 ½ monthly income of most elderly
people in Vietnam and 2,45 times higher than the average health care expenditure of
non elderly groups. By 2024 the elderly group will account for 13.4 percent of the
population but will be responsible for 46 percent of the total national health care
expenditure. A possible solution for ensuring the elderly have access to health care
services is to implement family based health insurance with different benefit packages,
for example, full coverage or inpatient coverage, so that the elderly and their family
could select the most suitable benefit package suitable to their income and local
conditions . In this study only data collected from Hanoi’s hospital were used. The
expenditure and the utilization rate of services are not represented for the entire
country. Therefore, further studies should have a sample which can represent the
whole country. In addition, the expenditure in this study was not the full expenditure;
the cost for labour and capital cost were not included in the calculation. The full cost
of health care expenditure of the elderly people could be explored in other studies.