Determinants of Personal Expenditure on Healthcare: A Case Study of Patients of a Public Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

The private individuals share about 76% in total healthcare expenditure in Nigeria, in contrast to about 24% by other sources. This has attracted researchers to explore the determinants of private health expenditure in the country. However, little attention has been paid to the role of socio-economic characteristics of service users as drivers of users’ healthcare expenditure. This study was motivated to fill this knowledge gap by surveying the perspectives of service users on whether the level and changes in their socio-economic status may influence their propensities to spend on healthcare. The study has a descriptive design such that twenty (20) service users were recruited randomly from a general hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria with a semi-structured questionnaire and interview used as instruments of data collection. The collected data were analyzed using a mix of frequency counts, percentages and logistic regression. Findings revealed that users' income level, educational attainment and occupation are strong determinants (with high probability coefficients) of private healthcare expenditure. However, family size and proximity to health facility are weak determinants of private healthcare expenditure in Nigeria. It is therefore recommended that government should increase the minimum wage in the country in order to allow users to increase their spending on healthcare. Alternatively, the reach of available health insurance schemes in the country should be expanded so that more service users with low private funding are eligible to access healthcare. This is especially important given low public health expenditure and the current experience of rising inflation in Nigeria.