Substantial out-of-pocket expenditure on maternity care practitioner consultations and treatments during pregnancy: estimates from a nationally-representative sample of pregnant women in Australia

Jon Adams; Amie Steel; Jane Frawley; Alex Broom; David Sibbritt

doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1297-5

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Substantial out-of-pocket expenditure on maternity care practitioner consultations and treatments during pregnancy: estimates from a nationally-representative sample of pregnant women in Australia

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Substantial out-of-pocket expenditure on maternity care practitioner consultations and treatments during pregnancy: estimates from a nationally-representative sample of pregnant women in Australia

Jon Adams, Amie Steel, Jane Frawley, Alex Broom and David Sibbritt

BMC pregnancy and childbirth, Vol.17, pp.1-8

12/04/2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1297-5

PMCID: PMC5389012

PMID: 28403816

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Abstract

Life Sciences & Biomedicine

Obstetrics & Gynecology

Science & Technology

Pregnancy

Economics

Complementary and alternative medicine

Background A wide range of health care options are utilised by pregnant women in Australia. The out-of-pocket costs of maternity care in Australia vary depending on many factors including model of care utilised, health insurance coverage, and women’s decision to access health services outside of conventional maternity care provision. Methods Women from the 1973–78 cohort of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) who identified as pregnant or as recently having given birth in 2009 were invited to complete a sub-study questionnaire investigating health service utilisation during their most recent pregnancy. Results A total of 1,835 women agreed to participate in the sub-study. The majority of women (99.8%) consulted with a conventional health care practitioner during pregnancy, 49.4% consulted with a complementary and alternative medicine practitioner at least once during pregnancy and 89.6% of the women used a complementary and alternative medicine product. Women reported an average of AUD$781.10 in out-of-pocket expenses for consultations with conventional health care practitioners, AUD$185.40 in out-of-pocket expenses for consultations with complementary and alternative medicine practitioners and AUD$179.60 in out-of-pocket expenses for complementary and alternative medicine products. From the study data we estimate Australian pregnant women spend over AUD$337 M on out-of-pocket health services. Conclusion While the majority of pregnant women in Australia may obtain health services via the publically-funded health care system and/or private health insurance coverage, our analysis identifies substantial out-of-pocket expenditure for health care by pregnant women – a trend in public spending for maternity care of importance to policy makers, health administrators, and health professionals.

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Title: Substantial out-of-pocket expenditure on maternity care practitioner consultations and treatments during pregnancy: estimates from a nationally-representative sample of pregnant women in Australia
Creators: Jon Adams - University of Technology Sydney
Amie Steel - University of Technology Sydney
Jane Frawley - University of Technology Sydney
Alex Broom - University of New South Wales
David Sibbritt - University of Technology Sydney
Publication Details: BMC pregnancy and childbirth, Vol.17, pp.1-8
Publisher: Springer Nature
Number of pages: 8
Grant note: DP1094765 / Australian Research Council Discovery Project; Australian Research Council
Identifiers: 991013036330002368
Copyright: © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Academic Unit: National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article

Substantial out-of-pocket expenditure on maternity care practitioner consultations and treatments during pregnancy: estimates from a nationally-representative sample of pregnant women in Australia

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