Khodamoradi Abdolvahed, Ghaffari Mohammad Payam, Daryabeygi-Khotbehsara Reza, Sajadi Haniye Sadat, Majdzadeh Reza
Department of Health Economics, Social Security Research Institute, Tehran, Iran.
Department of Business Management, Sciences and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Int J Health Plann Manage. 2018 Jan;33(1):e26-e37. doi: 10.1002/hpm.2464. Epub 2017 Oct 27.
Informal patients' payments (IPPs) is a sensitive subject. The aim of current study was to assess the trends in informal payment studies and explore methods of IPPs measurement, prevalence, and features (payment type, volume, and receiver) in various contexts.
A search strategy was developed to identify peer-reviewed articles addressing informal payments on PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Scopus, and CINAHL. A total of 1252 studies were identified initially. After screening process, 38 studies were included in the systematic review. The selected studies were appraised, and findings were synthesized.
Among selected studies, quantitative approaches were mostly used for measuring IPPs from general public and patients' perspective, and qualitative methods mainly targeted health care providers. Reported IPP prevalence in selected articles ranges between 2% and 80%, more prevalent in the inpatient sector than in outpatient.
There are a number of strategies for the measurement of IPPs with different strengths and weaknesses. Most applied strategies for general public were quantitative surveys recruiting more than 1000 participants using a face-to-face structured interview, and then qualitative studies on less than 150 health care providers, with focus group discussion. This review provides a comprehensive picture of current informal patients' payments measurement tools, which helps researchers in future investigations.
患者非正式支付是一个敏感话题。本研究的目的是评估非正式支付研究的趋势，并探讨在不同背景下测量患者非正式支付的方法、患病率及其特征（支付类型、金额和接收者）。
制定了检索策略，以识别发表于PubMed、Science Direct、Web of Science、Scopus和CINAHL上的关于非正式支付的同行评议文章。最初共识别出1252项研究。经过筛选，38项研究被纳入系统评价。对所选研究进行评估，并综合研究结果。
在所选研究中，定量方法大多用于从公众和患者的角度测量非正式支付，而定性方法主要针对医疗服务提供者。所选文章中报道的非正式支付患病率在2%至80%之间，住院部门比门诊部门更为普遍。
有多种测量非正式支付的策略，各有优缺点。针对公众的大多数应用策略是通过面对面结构化访谈招募1000多名参与者进行定量调查，然后针对不到150名医疗服务提供者进行定性研究，并采用焦点小组讨论。本综述全面介绍了当前测量患者非正式支付的工具，有助于研究人员开展未来的调查。
