The old age health security in rural China: where to go?

International Journal for Equity in Health

Baozhen Dai¹ 

[1] Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Management, Jiangsu University, 301 Xuefu Road, Zhenjiang 212013, China

关键词: Social medical assistance scheme;    New cooperative medical scheme;    Old age health security;    Elder;    Rural;    China;   

Others  :  1231277
DOI  :  10.1186/s12939-015-0224-5

 received in 2015-05-01, accepted in 2015-09-25,  发布年份 2015

【 摘 要 】

Introduction

The huge number of rural elders and the deepening health problems (e.g. growing threats of infectious diseases and chronic diseases etc.) place enormous pressure on old age health security in rural China. This study aims to provide information for policy-makers to develop effective measures for promoting rural elders’ health care service access by examining the current developments and challenges confronted by the old age health security in rural China.

Methods

Search resources are electronic databases, web pages of the National Bureau of Statistics of China and the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China on the internet, China Population and Employment Statistics Yearbook, China Civil Affairs’ Statistical Yearbook and China Health Statistics Yearbooks etc. Articles were identified from Elsevier, Wiley, EBSCO, EMBASE, PubMed, SCI Expanded, ProQuest, and National Knowledge Infrastructure of China (CNKI) which is the most informative database in Chinese. Search terms were “rural”, “China”, “health security”, “cooperative medical scheme”, “social medical assistance”, “medical insurance” or “community based medical insurance”, “old”, or “elder”, “elderly”, or “aged”, “aging”. Google scholar was searched with the same combination of keywords.

Results

The results showed that old age health security in rural China had expanded to all rural elders and substantially improved health care service utilization among rural elders. Increasing chronic disease prevalence rates, pressing public health issues, inefficient rural health care service provision system and lack of sufficient financing challenged the old age health security in rural China.

Conclusions

Increasing funds from the central and regional governments for old age health security in rural China will contribute to reducing urban–rural disparities in provision of old age health security and increasing health equity among rural elders between different regions. Meanwhile, initiating provider payment reform may contribute to improving the efficiency of rural health care service provision system and promoting health care service access among rural elders.

【 授权许可】

   
2015 Dai.

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