Healthcare-related expenditures among immigrants and non-immigrants living with HIV in colombia.

The perception that immigrants represent a burden to national health systems can hinder the development of policies for their inclusion in health coverage. In order to inform the development of such policies, data on the healthcare needs and healthcare spending for immigrants is required. The objective of this article is to compare the clinical characteristics and healthcare-related expenditures of Venezuelan immigrants and non-migrants living with HIV in Colombia. We analysed data from the Colombian High-cost Diseases Fund from February 1, 2018 to January 31, 2019, identifying the hospital and non-hospital expenditures per patient for Venezuelan immigrants and non-migrant patients, in both the state-subsidised and the contributory coverage schemes. We employed binomial negative regression models to compare expenditures between the two groups. In the contributory scheme, the average annual per-capita expenditure for immigrants was USD $ 859.07 (SD: ± $793.37) for non-hospital care. For non-migrants, the average costs were 1,796.53. In the state-subsidised scheme expenditures were higher on average, but still lower for immigrants than for non-migrants. After adjusting by clinical and sociodemographic characteristics, non-hospital per capita expenditures were lower for immigrants as compared with non-migrants (25,37% lower in the state-subsidised scheme, and 33,75% lower in the contributory scheme). Hospital expenditures were also lower, but the small sample size limited analysis. To conclude, Venezuelan immigrants living with HIV do not represent a major economic burden to the health system in Colombia. Further studies are required in order to understand if the lower healthcare expenditures of this population are the result of limitations in healthcare access, of clinical characteristics that were not assessed in this study, or of other unmeasured aspects.