Rural and urban differences in health system performance among older Chinese adults: cross-sectional analysis of a national sample

Table 2 Healthcare costs domain indicators in rural and urban China

Cost indicator	Overall	Urban (Ref)	Rural	Regression coefficients*
Outpatient
The last outpatient visit was free (%)	8.2	10.7	6.3	0.48 (0.28, 0.81) ^a
Mean out-of-pocket spending (Yuan)	206	295	139	−0.57 (− 0.85, − 0.28) ^c
Median of out-of-pocket spending (Yuan)	60	100	36	NA
Type of spending as % of out-of-pocket expenditure
Provider fees	4.6	9.3	1.7	−0.08 (0.02) ^b
Medicines	82.7	69.5	91.1	0.28 (0.08) ^b
Test	8.3	13.0	5.2	−0.10 (0.03) ^b
Transport	2.9	4.7	1.8	−0.04 (0.02) ^b
Other	1.5	3.5	0.2	−0.05 (0.02) ^b
Inpatient
The last inpatient visit was free (%)	4.1	4.8	3.5	0.92 (0.45, 1.90) ^a
Mean out-of-pocket spending (Yuan)	5397	6722	4194	−0.38 (−0.69, − 0.06) ^c
Median of out-of-pocket spending (Yuan)	2000	2500	1800	NA
Type of spending as % of out-of-pocket expenditure
Provider fees	12.8	13.7	12.0	−0.02 (0.02) ^b
Medicines	55.2	48.6	60.1	0.13 (0.03) ^b
Test	18.2	20.4	16.5	−0.03 (0.02) ^b
Transport	3.2	5.1	1.7	−0.04 (0.01) ^b
Other	10.7	12.1	9.7	−0.02 (0.02) ^b
Catastrophic health expenditure (%)^d
20%	37.3	37.3	37.4	1.30 (1.16, 1.44) ^a
30%	28.6	27.5	29.4	1.16 (1.04, 1.30) ^a
40%	21.9	19.9	23.6	1.08 (0.96, 1.23) ^a

Out-of-pocket spending was log-transformed to normalize its distribution and used in the regression model
Urban is the reference group
NA: not applicable
*All models adjusted for age, gender, education, income quintile, marital status, insurance status and province of residence;
Bold for significance level of 0.05;
^a: Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was presented
^b: coefficient from linear-regression model with standard error was presented
^c: coefficient from log-linear regression model with 95% confidence interval was presented
^d: percentage of respondents from a household which incurred catastrophic health expenditure

ISSN: 1472-6963