Objective To examine the status quo and influencing factors of outpatient service utilization among chronic disease patients in China and to provide evidences for promoting the utilization of outpatient services in the patients.
Methods Using convenient and snowball sampling, we recruited 1 059 chronic disease patients (hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and malignant tumor) in 7 provincial level regions in eastern, central and western China and conducted an online self-administered questionnaire survey between October 2018 and March 2019. Anderson model was adopted to analyze influencing factors of outpatient service utilization among the patients.
Results The two-weeks rate of outpatient service utilization was 37.36% among the 1 036 patients with valid response. Unconditional multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that the respondents with poor household economic condition, having siblings, and suffering from two or more chronic diseases were more likely to utilize outpatient medical service; while, those living in western regions, being manual workers, with average annual income of 5 000 yuan RMB per capita, and participating in the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme were less likely to utilize outpatient medical service. Enabling resources (including income per capita, household economic status, type of medical insurance and number of siblings) were the most significant impact factors for the utilization of outpatient service among the respondents, followed by demographic indicators and number of chronic diseases suffered from.
Conclusion The two-weeks rate of outpatient service utilization is low and mainly influenced by living region, occupation, average annual income per capita, family economic status, type of medical insurance, number of siblings and number of chronic diseases suffered from among chronic disease patients in China.
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