It belongs in the "boring-but-important" category of expenditure.
The first category of expenditure was hospitalisation (over 38%).
The presence of inpatient treatment was not significantly associated with any category of expenditure in the eastern or western regions.
Transportation, food and phone expenses were the major items in the non-medical expenditure category with the cost of vehicle damage the next important category of expenditure.
We conducted descriptive analyses of frequencies for each component of hardship and calculated means, medians and distributions for total out-of-pocket expenditure and for each category of expenditure.
The total economic burden of prematurity by category of expenditure (neonatal costs,direct medical costs in subsequent years, and lost productivity costs) is reported in Table 3, both aggregated over all preterm infants and stratified by gestational age at birth.
The first set analyzed the actual amount of expenditure (in RMB), and the second analyzed the percentage of each category of expenditure (as of the total expenditure), which may better describe the scenario with a fixed total budget, as the sum of percentages is one.
The second set of multivariate regression analyses were conducted on the percentage of each category of expenditure (defined as the ratio of the amount of expenditure in a specific category over the total expenditure).The results are shown in Table 5.
For this category of expenditure, the Organization experience a reduction of the purchasing power of appropriations which are denominated in dollars when other currencies (essentially the Lira) appreciate vis--vis the Dollar (e.g. in 1996) and an increase in this purchasing power when they depreciate (e.g. in 1997).
The lack of effect is unfortunate in that the largest single category of expenditure for annual ED charges in Medicaid children in this study was $1,182,878 for otitis media and upper respiratory infection, conditions which should be less expensive to treat in a primary care setting.
