What Makes Vietnamese (Not) Attend Periodic General Health Examinations? A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: General health examinations (GHE) have become an increasingly common measure for preventive medicine in Vietnam. However there has still been a lack of understanding about what make Vietnamese (not)attend GHE. The effects of budget or time constraints remain to evaluated. Better-informed policy making needs these inputs.

Aim & Objectives: This study aims to investigate factors that may affect Vietnamese behaviors with respect to periodic GHE. Main objectives are to: i) explore empirical relationships between influencing factors and periodic GHE frequencies; and, ii) predict the probabilities of attending GHE and associated conditions.

Materials and Methods: The study uses a 2,068-observation categorical dataset obtained from a Vietnamese survey in 2016Q4. The analysis is then performed using the methods of baseline-category logits for establishing relationships between predictor and response variables.

Results: There exist relationships among: (i) GHE expenditure and time consumption; (ii) health priority and sensitivity to health data; (iii) insurance status, and (iv) the frequency of GHE, with most p's<0.01. The general trend shows that psychological factors tend to increase the probability of attending GHE, while costs and time consumption diminish it.

Conclusion: (a) People tend to attend GHE if they have resources and a priority for health, with a 72.7% probability; (b) Expenditure and time consumption obstacles reduce the probability of periodic GHE; (c) Setting a health priority and having habit of consuming health data tend to increase the probability of attending periodic GHE; (d) Health insurance should play a positive role in promoting GHE.

Keywords: general health examination, health insurance, medical costs, health service consumers, Vietnam

JEL Classification: I18, P20