Abstract:
This study was established to investigate the Determinants of public hospital visiting household’s
out of pocket healthcare expenditure in ambo town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. A
systematic sampling procedure was used to take sample of 384 women household respondents
using random sampling technique from both public hospitals in Ambo which is Ambo town
hospital and Ambo University Teaching and referral hospital. For the study both primary and
secondary sources of data were conducted. Primary data was collected through structured
questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The collected data was
analyzed using both descriptive and Multinomial logistic regression model. Descriptive analysis
was conducted to discuss the behavior of rural women economic empowerment in agricultural
activities and performed using frequencies, percentage, and means, and standard deviation,
maximum and minimum values. The Multinomial logistic regression result reveals that out of the
main factors identified were age, gender, educational level, household income, health insurance
service, employment status, Distance from public hospitals in Ambo town, and resident area of
the households identified as urban and rural area. Under the major category of health care
expenditures identified as formal health care the major coefficients were statistically significant
at 1% and 5% statistical level of significance with exception for income and employment status
of the respondent. The findings of the study recommended that the policy makers effectively
implement the rights of it is enhanced to follow a clear health policy that takes into account
people who live in rural, low-income, remote, and illiteracy issues to determine whether they
have access to enough health facilities or not by removing barriers to care such as a lack of
workers, lack of health insurance, problems with transportation, a lack of health literacy, and
stigma in rural communities.
