Comparing income inequalities in healthcare utilization in the low income community in suburban Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia

Nithiah Thangiah,Hazreen Abdul Majid,Tin Tin Su

doi:10.1186/1472-6963-14-s2-p144

Abstract

Background This paper aims to measure and compare income inequalities in healthcare utilization in the low income community in suburban Kuala Lumpur as compared to the national population level in Malaysia. The prevalence of those who sought outpatient treatment for acute and chronic illnesses and also prevalence of inpatient admission in both public and private health facilities were compared.

Highlights

This paper aims to measure and compare income inequalities in healthcare utilization in the low income community in suburban Kuala Lumpur as compared to the national population level in Malaysia
Materials and methods The data consists of 800 households with 3722 respondents from four Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) among the low income community in suburban Kuala Lumpur and compared with data from the National Health and Morbidity Survey in 2006 consisting of 13,637 households with 56,710 respondents
For the low income community, analysis across ranked monthly household income reveals that in governmentled public healthcare facilities, inequalities in outpatient attendances and inpatient admission to be in favor of the lower socioeconomic groups with concentration index (CI) values of -0.0874 and -0.0636 respectively

Summary

Background

The prevalence of those who sought outpatient treatment for acute and chronic illnesses and prevalence of inpatient admission in both public and private health facilities were compared

Materials and methods

Results

Conclusions