Estimation of out-of-pocket costs of patients at the methadone maintenance therapy clinic in Malaysia

Out-of-pocket (OOP) payments may burden Methadone Maintenance Clinic patients. Since treatment is fully subsidized by the government, financial constraint might lead to patients being made to pay or be given incentive for inconvenience of therapy. This study thus evaluates the characteristic and commitment of methadone therapy patient's in terms of OOP cost, Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) and Willingness-To-Accept (WTA) concept. This survey utilizes the questionnaire by Boris ova & Goodman (2003) on the OOP, WTP and WTA. The forty adult patient's selected medical records from year 2009-2011 were from an urban government methadone clinic. Subject's selection was by convenient sampling based on the predetermined criteria. Most were male (95%) and Malay (60%) was the predominant group. Patients were group into three income groups; ≤ RM1000, ≥ RM1000 -≤ RM2000 and ≥ RM3000. The average OOP cost per month was RM391.30 (s.d RM337.50), which is about 35% of employed patient's monthly income. The wide variation could be attributed by high inter-individual and significant differences between patients in terms of transport, times taken to clinic, cost per trip and weekly household income (p=<0.05). Patients with income of less than RM1000 showed the highest tendency to pay for treatment, asked for the least money for inconvenience and many are unwilling to accept any payments. These findings showed that WTP and WTA is less of a concern for patients in the low-income group. To conclude, OOP payment is not a treatment barrier for most of the urban MMT patients.