[Catastrophic Health Expenditure before and after Compensations from the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme in Rural Zigong of Sichuan Province].

OBJECTIVES: To estimate catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) of rural families in Zigong, and to determine the main influencing factors of CHE. METHODS: CHE was estimated using indicators such as occurrence and average deviations. The influencing factors of CHE were identified through binary logistic regression. RESULTS: We found 6.37% catastrophic health payment headcount, 1.13% mean catastrophic payment gap, and 17.80% mean positive gap after compensations. Compensations from the new rural cooperative medical scheme (NCMS) led to a reduction of 74.81% catastrophic health payment headcount for hospitalization costs and 48.00% catastrophic health payment headcount for outpatient costs, respectively. The numbers of hospitalizations in a family, presence of patients with chronic diseases, per capita household income, and numbers of family members with a job were found to be predictors of CHE. CONCLUSIONS: Rural families that have patients with chronic diseases are vulnerable to CHE.The government should develop policies to ease the financial burdens of the families with a high accumulated health expenditure over time.