Out of Pocket Expenditure and Utilization of Government Financial Assistance Among Women Who Had Institutional Delivery in An Urban Slum of Telangana, India

Abstract

Background: Out of Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) are expenditures directly made by households at the point of receiving health care. In Telangana State the average OOPE per delivery in public health facility is Rs. 3846. The study helps to know the OOPE among mothers undergoing institutional deliveries and emphasise on the expenditure even after utilising the government financial assistance. Objectives: To estimate the OOPE among women undergoing institutional delivery and to find its association with government financial assistance utilization and socio-demographic factors. Methodology: A community based cross sectional study was done among 200 mothers who delivered recently residing in an urban slum under our health and training centre. Ethical clearance was taken before the conduct of study. Results: The median direct out of pocket expenditure among mothers in our study was Rs.500 i.e., 6.6 $ (0 to 1600). OOPE was present among 68.5% of mothers. Availability of government financial assistance, age and occupation of the mother and type of delivery was found to be significantly associated with p value <0.05. Conclusion: The financial assistance definitely reduced the burden of OOPE among the mothers. The implementation of such schemes is important and needs to be evaluated time to time to ensure proper reach of its benefits to the community.

Keywords

• Out of pocket expenditure
• OOPE
• financial assistance
• institutional delivery
• urban slum