Institut za onkologiju i radiologiju Srbije / Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia
Published March 11, 2022 | Version v.1.
Journal article Open

Financial burden of medical care, dental care and medicines among older-aged population in Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia.

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Department for Healthcare Quality Improvement, Institute of Public Health of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2. Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Social Medicine, University of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.
  • 3. Centre for Socio-Economic Research on Ageing, IRCCS INRCA-National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing, 60124 Ancona, Italy
  • 4. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

Description

The aim was to explore the factors associated with the financial burden (FB) of medical care, dental care, and medicines among older-aged people in Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia using EU-SILC 2017. The highest frequency of FB of medical care and medicines was in Croatia (50% and 69.1%, respectively) and of dental care in Slovenia (48.5%). The multivariate logistic regression analysis with FB as an outcome variable showed that the FB of medical care was associated with being married (OR: 1.54), reporting not severe (OR: 1.51) and severe limitations in daily activities (OR: 2.05), having higher education (OR: 2.03), and heavy burden of housing costs (OR: 0.51) in Slovenia, with very bad self-perceived health (OR: 5.23), having the slight (OR: 0.69) or heavy (OR: 0.47) burden of housing costs, making ends meet fairly easily or with some difficulty (OR: 3.58) or with difficulty or great difficulty (OR: 6.80) in Serbia, and with being married (OR: 1.43), having heavy burden of housing costs (OR: 0.62), and making ends meet fairly easily or with some difficulty (OR: 2.08) or with difficulty or great difficulty (OR: 2.52) in Croatia. The older-aged have the FB of healthcare, especially the poorest or those with health problems.

Keywords: financial burden; healthcare; older-aged; likelihood; medical care; dental care; medicines

Notes

This article belongs to the Special Issue Aging: From an Evolutionary Perspective to Challenges for Healthy Aging. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, K.V.; methodology, K.V., Z.T.-S. and J.T.; software, J.T. and K.V.; formal analysis, K.V. and J.T.; data curation, K.V.; writing—original draft preparation, K.V.; writing—review and editing, Z.T.-S., J.T., C.G., M.S.-M. and M.P.; supervision, Z.T.-S., M.S.-M. and C.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: This research was partially supported by Ricerca Corrente funding from the Italian Ministry of Health to IRCCS INRCA. Institutional Review Board Statement: For this research, the consent of the Ethics Committee from the Faculty of Medicine University of Belgrade was obtained (Approval No. 1322/VII-9 from 8 July 2021). Informed Consent Statement: This research uses a second-hand dataset collected by statistical offices of the Republic of Serbia, the Republic of Slovenia, and the Republic of Croatia. Details about the EUSILC research are available at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/income-and-living-conditions/ methodology (accessed on 8 March 2022). Data Availability Statement: For using EU-SILC microdata for this research, we have obtained permission from European Commission (Ref. Ares(2019)6720595). Microdata available from Eurostat, on request. Details are available at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata/european-unionstatistics-on-income-and-living-conditions (accessed on 8 March 2022)

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Is identical to
PMC8953375 (pmcid)
Is part of
1660-4601 (ISSN)