Demographic and socioeconomic determinants of the use of periodic health examinations: public vs. private sector.
Periodic health examinations (PHEs) are prevalent in Korea. While some people frequently use public PHEs, others use private PHEs with high fees. This study examined the determinants of the use of public and private PHEs using a multinomial logit model. We used the data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) Wave I conducted in 2006. The KLoSA was a national longitudinal study of a representative sample of individuals (n = 10,253) aged 45 years or older. The mean age of the sample was 61.6 years; 77.8% of subjects were married and 37.5% had at least a high school education. The most frequent type of PHE usage was public PHEs only (38.9%), followed by private PHEs only (7.3%) and both public and private PHEs (6.5%). This study found that subjects who lived in rural areas or who were employed were significantly more likely to use public PHEs because of many public health facilities in rural area and mandatory public PHEs for employees. Those who used private PHEs only were educated, wealthy, or unhealthy, because private PHEs required out-of-pocket payments and provided higher quality services. Those who used both types of PHE had a high socio-economic status or a bad health status. The authors suggest that policy makers pay attention to the use of public PHEs among populations with lower socio-economic status. As for the group of subjects who use both types of PHE, their overutilization of PHEs must be reduced through cooperation between the public and private PHEs.
Department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
Young Dae
YD
Kwon
Chang Hoon
CH
You
Eun-Hwan
EH
Oh
Sungwook
S
Kang
D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006296:Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010808:Physical Examination / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017149:Private Sector / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017150:Public Sector / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors