Research On Resdents Health Seeking Behavior In Gansu Province

Gansu Province is located in western China. Health development in Gansu falls behind the average of the country and health conditions of the residents are comparatively low. Underutilization of health services is rather common and poverty resulted from disease is also a serious problem. Thus, it is crucial to research resident’s health seeking behavior so that we can have a better understanding of the characteristics and laws of resident’s health service demands, effectively solve the problem of poor medical treatment feasibility and reasonably allocate limited health resources to improve resident’s health condition.By investigating different population group’s choice of medical institutions, reasons of selecting different medical institutions or doctors, medical treatment status quo of urban and rural residents, health seeking behavior of the residents with different health conditions or gender, the research aims to reveal the main factors which influence residents health seeking behavior and their decisions on whether or not to get medical services, to propose possible solutions according to the analysis of those unreasonable medical treatment behaviors so as to provide a good basis for the formulation of health policy, help residents make more reasonable medical options and health service institutions to improve their service quality.The study adopted a combining method of cluster and random sampling.10cities of different economic development in Gansu were randomly selected as survey sites and4000random sample residents in each region were questionnaire. We distributed4000questionnaires and recycled3903valid ones, rating97.58%. The questionnaire had two parts, basic personal information and questions. After the information was collected, a database was established with EpiData3.0software. Then the data was verified with it again after double data entry. Finally the data was analyzed with SPSS12.0.The findings show that residents in Gansu province, whether in urban area or rural, prefer to choose private clinics while selecting a medical institution; Those factors, such as convenience and time-saving, treatment quality focusing, mainly contribute to impacting Gansu residents health seeking behavior; Health care reform plays a guiding role on people’s health seeking behavior; The factors which influence people’s choice of different doctors are as follows:social prestige, high-level skills, random, disease condition, title, doctor familiarity, good attitude, less waiting time and so on; Self-diagnosis and economic status are two main reasons for not timely seeking medical treatment. The top three problems that medical personnel need to solve immediately are:to strengthen the doctor’s responsibility and mission, to rich clinical experience for enhancing professional standards and to improve medical ethics. The main factors that prevent high-quality health care services lie in low-level medical ethics and high charges.Based on the above analysis and discussion, the following suggestions are proposed:(1) To improve various medical insurance systems.(2) To strengthen the construction of primary health care sector.(3) To develop the role of private medical institutions.(4) To enforce the medical assistance efforts.(5) Rationally set the price of medical services.(6) To reduce information asymmetry in medical treatment.