Catastrophic health expenditure and evaluation of deprivation effect in health care

Catastrophic health expenditure occurs when out-of-pocket health expenditures exceed the expenditures that enable households to meet their basic living needs to a certain extent. As this situation increases, it creates an effect that makes households increasingly impoverished. As this situation increases, it creates an effect that makes households increasingly impoverished. Deprivation of health services is accepted as one of the causes of catastrophic health expenditure. In this study, revealing the deprived impact of the catastrophic health spending on healthcare services in Turkey and the effect of socio-economic factors on catastrophic health spending are aimed to investigate. In addition, the course of the deprivation index in healthcare services in OECD countries in comparison with Turkey are being investigated. In this study which is carried out by using secondary data, the OECD, TUIK and the World Bank data that cover the years 2002-2018 has been used. In this context, besides information about households collected regularly by TUIK, generally accepted criteria from TÜİK,OECD and the World Bank such as the number of physicians per thousand people, the number of hospitals per one million people and the number of beds per hundred thousand people were used. Also, Gını coefficient and poor household rate were used to reveal the relationship between income inequality and catastrophic health expenditure. Descriptive statistical methods, least squares method and TOPSIS methods were used in the analysis of the data. Data is analyzed at 95% confidence interval (p = 0.05). According to the findings of the study, there are statistically significant and negative relationships between catastrophic health expenditure and deprivation in health service indicators. There are also statistically significant and positive relationship between the socio-economic factors which is gini coefficient and catastrophic health spending and rate of poor households. In terms of health services deprivation indicators in selected OECD countries, while the course of England, Turkey and American countries remain unchanged by periods, the course of deprivation of health care indicators in Germany, Canada and Mexico change by periods. As a result, the development of deprivation indicators in health services which are considered as the basic elements in the delivery of health services, contribute to the reduction of catastrophic health expenditures. For this reason, it is recommended to organize the necessary programs in policy and health institutions in health care delivery in order to increase access to health services.