Preference of hospital usage in India

Abstract

Health is important and money is not matter, if people are concerned for the treatment of various ailments. A collective acceptance with regard to hospital usage is that most of the people prefer to use private hospitals even if the cost of private hospital tends to be high. Public hospitals are not preferred due to poorer quality of their services, even though these services are provided at low cost. At the time of independence, nearly 15% of the people used private sector. In a recent study by World Bank, it has been found that about 80% of the people use the private hospitals in India. In order to understand the preference of hospitals of ailing persons, we make use of the National Sample Survey Organization's 60 th round data on morbidity and health-care conducted in 2004. Using this data, we first described the demographic, social and economic characteristics of person who use the hospitals. We have also used primary data collecting during May-September 2010 in Bundelkhand region, Uttar Pradesh. There were 360 farmers have interviewed from three villages from each Banda and Hamirpur districts. We have tried to understand the preference of hospital usage among the migrant and non-migrant households. We have found that migrant households preferred private hospital for any type of treatment whereas non-migrant households still have faith on herbal and magician for the treatment. Migrant household preferred institutional delivery and spent money on healthy food such as fruits and vegetables. Migrant households were more health conscious and more exposed about the health awareness programs such as polio, immunization and health check-up of the children. Interesting to note that migrants households have first aid box and some general medicine such paracetamol, B-complex table and syrup. Some of them have thermometer and they are able to measure the body temperature and apply medicine to control fever if any time appeared among the member of households.