Survey of patients’ awareness of the actual cost of visits in relation to their individual responsibility for health

Abstract

Aim: One of the effective factors in appropriate services utilization, optimal resource use, and preventing unnecessary visits to specialty clinics is informing people of the actual costs of the services provided and asking them to take their individual responsibility for health. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between patients' awareness of the actual cost of visits at specialized and sub-specialized clinics and their individual responsibility for health. Subject and methods: The present study is a cross-sectional study which was conducted in 2020. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. All patients who referred to specialty and sub-specialty clinics in Kerman (Southeast of Iran) were the study population, of whom a sample of 400 patients were selected by a stratified and simple random sampling approach. Results: The results showed that only 10 of the sample patients were aware of the actual costs of the visit. The level of individual responsibility for health was relatively good. The relationship between awareness of the actual costs of the visit and individual responsibility for health was not statistically significant (P-value < 0.1). Conclusions: This study indicated that people are not well aware of the costs, and health system resources could be wasted by overutilization due to the lack of awareness of their true value. However, the individual responsibility for health is good, which can be used for controlling health care costs by promoting informed and rational choices for health services utilization. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023.