Preference of primary care patients for home-based healthcare and support services: a discrete choice experiment in China

Liu, Y; Du, S; Liu, Chaojie; Xue, T; Tang, Y

doi:10.26181/25833769.v1

1645683_Liu,Y_2024.pdf (715.53 kB)

Preference of primary care patients for home-based healthcare and support services: a discrete choice experiment in China

journal contribution

posted on 2024-05-16, 01:31 authored by Y Liu, S Du, Chaojie LiuChaojie Liu, T Xue, Y Tang

Importance: This research, utilizing discrete choice experiments, examines the preferences and willingness to pay for home-based healthcare and support services among residents in China, a country grappling with severe aging population, an area often underexplored in international scholarship. Objectives: This study aims to solicit the preferences of primary care patients for home-based healthcare and support services in China. Design, setting, and participants: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted on 312 primary care patients recruited from 13 community health centers in Wuhan and Kunming between January and May 2023. The experimental choice sets were generated using NGene, covering five attributes: Scope of services, health professionals, institutions, insurance reimbursements, and visiting fees. Main outcomes and measures: The choice sets were further divided into three blocks, and each participant was asked to complete one block containing 12 choice tasks. Mixed logit models were established to estimate the relevant importance coefficients of and willingness to pay for different choices, while Latent Class Logit (LCL) modeling was conducted to capture possible preferences heterogeneity. Results: The relevant importance of the scope of services reached 67.33%, compared with 19.84% for service institutions and 12.42% for health professionals. Overall, respondents preferred physician-led diagnostic and treatment services. LCL categorized the respondents into three groups: Group one (60.20%) was most concerned about the scope of services, prioritizing disease diagnosis and treatment over preventive care and mental health, while group two (16.60%) was most concerned about care providers (hospitals and medical doctors were preferred), and group three (23.20%) was most concerned about financial burdens. Conclusion: Primary care patients prefer physical health and medical interventions for home-based healthcare and support services. However, heterogeneity in preferences is evident, indicating potential disparities in healthcare and support at home services in China.

Funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. It is worth noting that this project received invaluable support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 2019kfyXJJS171).

History

Publication Date

2024-04-18

Journal

Frontiers in Public Health

Volume

12

Article Number

1324776

Pagination

15p.

Publisher

Frontiers Media S.A.

ISSN

2296-2565

Rights Statement

© 2024 Liu, Du, Liu, Xue and Tang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.