Peking University Reports Findings in Health Services (Changes in health care utilization and financial protection after integration of the rural and urban social health insurance schemes in Beijing, China): Health and Medicine – Health Services

Education Daily Report

2022 OCT 17 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Education Daily Report -- New research on Health and Medicine - Health Services is the subject of a report. According to news reporting originating from Beijing, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “China expanded health coverage to residents in informal economic sectors by the rural new cooperative medical scheme (NCMS) for rural population and urban resident basic medical insurance scheme (URBMI) for non-working urban residents. Fragmentation of resident social health insurance schemes exacerbated the health inequity and China started the integration of urban and rural resident medical insurance schemes since 2016.”

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Peking University, “Beijing finished the insurance integration in 2017 and has been implementing a unified urban and rural resident basic medical insurance scheme (URRBMI) since the beginning of 2018. This study aims to examine changes in health care utilization and financial protection after integration of the rural and urban social health insurance schemes. We used household survey data from Beijing Health Services Survey in 2013 and 2018. Respondents who were 15 or older and covered by URBMI, NCMS or URRBMI were included in this study. Our study finally included 8,554 individuals in 2013 and 6,973 individuals in 2018, about 70% of which were rural residents in each year. Descriptive analysis was used to compare the healthcare utilization, healthcare expenditure and incidence of catastrophic health expenditure between different groups. A series of two-part regression models were used to analyze the changes of healthcare utilization, healthcare expenditure and incidence of catastrophic health expenditure. From 2013 to 2018, urban-rural disparity in outpatient care utilization seemed widened because urban residents’ utilization of outpatient care increased 131% while rural residents’ utilization only increased 72%; both rural and urban residents’ spending on outpatient care increased about 50%. Utilization of inpatient care changed little and poor residents still used significantly less inpatient care compared with the rich residents. Poor residents still suffered heavily catastrophic health expenditures. From 2013 to 2018, residents’ utilization of healthcare, especially outpatient care, increased in Beijing. Health insurance reforms increased residents’ utilization of healthcare but failed to reduce their healthcare financial burden, especially for poor people.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Our study advocates more pro-poor insurance policies and more efforts on the efficiency of health system.”

For more information on this research see: Changes in health care utilization and financial protection after integration of the rural and urban social health insurance schemes in Beijing, China. BMC Health Services Research, 2022;22(1):1226. BMC Health Services Research can be contacted at: Bmc, Campus, 4 Crinan St, London N1 9XW, England. (BioMed Central - http://www.biomedcentral.com/; BMC Health Services Research - http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmchealthservres/)

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Ping He, China Center for Health Development Studies, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Zhenyu Shi, Dawei Zhu, Feng Lu and Qingyue Meng.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08602-1. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the journal BMC Health Services Research is: Bmc, Campus, 4 Crinan St, London N1 9XW, England.