Determinants of Public Hospital Visiting Household’s Out of Pocket Healthcare Expenditure in Ambo Town Public Hospitals

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.