Affiliations 

  • 1 Community Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, MAHSA University, Saujana Putra Campus, 42610 Jenjarom, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 University of Malaya Cancer Research Institute (UMCRI), Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Centre for Population Health (CePH), Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Malays J Med Sci, 2019 Jan;26(1):15-43.
PMID: 30914891 MyJurnal DOI: 10.21315/mjms2019.26.1.3

Abstract

The World Health Organization estimates that annually 150 million people experience severe (catastrophic) financial difficulties as a result of healthcare payments. Therefore, a systematic review was carried out to identify the determinants of household catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) in low-to high-income countries around the world. Both electronic and manual searches were conducted. The main outcome of interest was the determinants of CHE due to healthcare payments. Thirty eight studies met the inclusion criteria for review. The analysis revealed that household economic status, incidence of hospitalisation, presence of an elderly or disabled household member in the family, and presence of a family member with a chronic illness were the common significant factors associated with household CHE. The crucial finding of the current study is that socioeconomic inequality plays an important role in the incidence of CHE all over the world, where low-income households are at high risk of financial hardship from healthcare payments. This suggests that healthcare financing policies should be revised in order to narrow the gap in socioeconomic inequality and social safety nets should be implemented and strengthened for people who have a high need for health care.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.