Abstracts Health Sciences

Η οικονομική κρίση και οι επιπτώσεις στο σύστημα υγείας και στους δείκτες υγείας του ελληνικού πληθυσμού

by Christina Tsirona

Introduction: The economic crisis has exerted a catalytic influence on the country's health system and on the health level of the Greek population, with the consequences appearing both at the equal use and access of citizens to health services and at the health expenditure of households. As Greek society is strongly experiencing the changes from the crisis effects, the scientific community is strongly concerned about the social inequalities presented by the vulnerable population groups.Objective: Τhe aim of the study was to investigate the use and access of citizens to health services and to present recession’s effects on households’ health expenditure, in order to highlight the degree of equal access to the public health system.Methodology: A specially designed questionnaire based on two relevant previous tools was used to collect the data and was adapted according to the assistance of experts in the health sector. The research sample was nationwide and consisted of 1,919 people who participated in the telephone interviews. For the selection of the sample, the method of stratified sampling was applied from the telephone directories of the OTE of 2014, by geographical area, in an attempt to represent the different geographical areas in order to achieve the representativeness of the sample in terms of the adult Greek population. The results were processed using the SPSS statistical program and linear and logistic regression analyzes were used.Results: 48% of the respondents were found to have a chronic health problem (22.7% related to a cardiac problem or problem of the circulatory system and 20.7% related to an endocrinological problem) for which regular medication is necessary. Regarding to the visits to the different medical specialties and the type of primary services the health service users chose, 16.9% (n=325) visited a general practitioner non-contracted private (n=112) and contracted private ( n=142).Regarding to the use of dental health services, it was found that almost half of the participants (49.5%) visited a private dental office. According to the results of multivariate logistic regression, it was found that there is a statistically significant relationship between age (p<0.001), socioeconomic class (p=0.032), health insurance (p<0.001), gender (p=0.02) and visit to private dental practice. Additionally, 10.5% stated that was hospitalized in a public hospital with the most frequent reason being cardiac problems (13.9%), while 2.7% was hospitalized in a private hospital with the most frequent reason being childbirth (17.3%). According to the results of multivariate logistic regression, it was found that there is a statistically significant relationship between age (p=0.008), chronic health problem (p<0.001) and admission to a public hospital.9.6% (n=184) of participants visited the Emergency Department (ED) for health problem that was not potentially life-threatening with the most important reasons being not knowing where else to go (55.4%) and inability to cover financial costs in other health services…