Direct and Indirect Costs of Household Health Expenditure

Today، the lack of financial protection against the health costs is recognized as a major flaw in the health systems. It seems that the first step towards solving this problem is exact identification of household health expenditure`s components which will result in better selection of prevention policies and appropriate procedures to solve the problem. This study is a qualitative research conducted in two stages. The first stage consisted of interview with a sample formed by households from eight provinces of the country to identify the different components of household health expenditure. After that، a panel of experts categorized the identified components to direct and indirect costs. In The first stage، 93 kinds of households’ health expenditure were identified. In the next stage، 61 cases of these were categorized as direct costs and the other 32 cases were categorized as indirect costs. The exact identification of the components of health expenditure of households and dividing them into two categories of direct and indirect costs can be useful for a more accurate calculation of the household health expenditure in future studies.