Abstract

VALENCIA RAMIREZ, Gloria Marcela  and  CARDONA RIVAS, Dora. Pocket health expenditure in hypertension patients. Caldas. Revista médica Risaralda [online]. 2015, vol.21, n.2, pp.32-38. ISSN 0122-0667.

Objective: To measure the pocket spending on health in hypertensive patients (278) of the municipality of San José department of Caldas, contributory and subsidized regimes of the Social Security System in health (SHSS) according to clinical and socioeconomic conditions. Methods: Study to establish the relationship between the pocket health spending in hypertensive patients with and without target organ injury through econometric model that estimates the marginal propensity to consume health. Results: With a Chi2 of 7.88 and p = 0.029 no dependence between target organ injury and severity of hypertension. Statistically significant differences for all expenditures on health care, except for medication, dental and hospital care when comparing patients according to target organ damage are observed. The marginal propensity to consume health shows that for every thousand dollars of household income patients without involvement of target organ 2 pesos devoted to health spending ; however , patients with target organ injury per thousand pesos of 43 pesos household income devoted to health spending. Conclusions: The pocket expense for treatment of hypertensive patients is increased in patients that present white organ injury. While this spending is not enough to be catastrophic, monitoring and surveillance of these patients is given a high priority in the SHSS because of the impact on quality of life and health care costs.

Keywords : pocket health expenses; hypertension; clinical conditions; Social Security System in Health.

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