Availability and affordability of diabetes healthcare services associated with the frequency of diabetes-related complications

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Alijanzadeh, M, Hashemipour, S, Attaran, F, Saremi, S, Modarresnia, L, Ghafelehbashi, H, Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524 and Alimoardi, Z, 2024. Availability and affordability of diabetes healthcare services associated with the frequency of diabetes-related complications. BMC Health Services Research, 24: 1586. ISSN 1472-6963

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-12065-x

Abstract

Aims: Understanding the healthcare access challenges facing diabetic patients in low- and middle-income countries is very important. The present study investigated the association between availability (physical access) and affordability (economic access) to diabetes healthcare services and the frequency of diabetes-related complications.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey study was conducted between February and May 2023 in Qazvin, Iran. Using convenience sampling, 373 type 2 diabetic patients (mean age = 57.99 years; SD = 11.71) referred to diabetic specialists’ clinics were surveyed. Demographic characteristics, physical access to diabetes healthcare services, economic access to diabetes healthcare services, and frequency of diabetes-related complications (FDRCs) were assessed. Data were assessed using linear regression analysis.

Results: The mean total access score to healthcare services was 17.71 (out of 30; SD ± 4.21; range 6–30). Patients who had more access to healthcare services had less diabetes-related complications (p < 0.005). There was a significant negative correlation (p < 0.01) between FDRCs and (i) physical access to diabetes-related healthcare services (r = -0.166) and (ii) economic access to diabetes-related healthcare services (r = -0.153). Linear regression analysis showed that with each unit increase in participants’ economic, physical and total access to diabetes-related healthcare services, the FDRCs among participants decreased by 8.7%, 13.5%, and 8.8% respectively.

Conclusion: The results indicate that increased physical accessibility (availability) and economic accessibility (affordability) of healthcare services are associated with fewer diabetes-related complications. Therefore, policymakers and healthcare managers need to reduce diabetes-related complications by implementing schemes to increase patient access to diabetes treatment services.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	BMC Health Services Research
Creators:	Alijanzadeh, M., Hashemipour, S., Attaran, F., Saremi, S., Modarresnia, L., Ghafelehbashi, H., Griffiths, M.D. and Alimoardi, Z.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	18 December 2024
Volume:	24
ISSN:	1472-6963
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s12913-024-12065-x DOI 2328605 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	19 Dec 2024 09:06
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2024 09:06
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52742