National sample surveys show poor households face catastrophic expenditure for oral healthcare services in India

Banuru Muralidhara Prasad; Jaya Prasad Tripathy; Om Prakash Bera; Namita Shanbhag

doi:10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_2322_20

National sample surveys show poor households face catastrophic expenditure for oral healthcare services in India

J Family Med Prim Care. 2021 Aug;10(8):2853-2858. doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_2322_20. Epub 2021 Aug 27.

Authors

Banuru Muralidhara Prasad¹, Jaya Prasad Tripathy², Om Prakash Bera³, Namita Shanbhag⁴

Affiliations

¹ Tuberculosis and Communicable Diseases, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, The Union South East Asia Office, New Delhi, India.
² Department of Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India.
³ Principal Consultant, Global Health Advocacy Incubator, New Delhi, India.
⁴ Department of Public Health Dentistry, Government Dental College and Research Institute, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

Abstract

Introduction: Globally people pay out-of-pocket (OOP) to access Oral healthcare services. In India, there is limited evidence on estimates of OOP expenditure. We undertook an analysis of national sample survey data on household health care expenditure to understand the expenditure pattern for Oral healthcare services and the catastrophic burden.

Method: The expenditure reported for Oral healthcare services from two surveys: 71^st round and 75^th round, published by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) was extracted. Based on monthly household consumption expenditure three economic groups were made: poor, middle- and rich-income groups. The OOP expenditure pattern while accessing day-care services and hospitalization and in public and private sector and the catastrophic expenditure were analysed.

Results: A total of 204 and 155 households from two national surveys reported to have accessed day-care Oral services respectively. The median OOP expenditure in public sector remained same at US $ 4 in both surveys. Over 35% of 78 households in 71^st round and 42% of 167 in 75^th round used public sector hospitalization services. The median expenditure of hospitalization doubled from US$ 58 (IQR 21-263) in 71^st round to US $ 125 (IQR 45-363) in 75^th round. Households from poor income groups spent seven times more for Oral healthcare services during the recent survey and faced catastrophic expenditure.

Conclusion: The OOP expenditure for Oral healthcare has significant catastrophic household expenditure among the poor. There is a need to increase investment in public sector and insurance to protect poor against hospitalization expenditure in private sector.

Keywords: Catastrophe; healthcare expenditure; oral healthcare; out of pocket.