Background: The government's policy to seek universal coverage through National Health Insurance (NHI) is expected to increase public access to health service facilities, including in disadvantaged areas. The study aims to analyze the NHI's role in hospital utilization in underprivileged areas in Indonesia.
Methods: The analysis employed the available data from the 2023 National Socioeconomic Survey. This study employed a cross-sectional approach to examine 130,331 participants. The study used hospital utilization as the dependent variable and NHI membership as the independent variable. The study investigated residence, age, gender, marital status, education, occupation, and wealth status as factors used for control. The study employed multinomial logistic regression in the last stage to evaluate the data.
Results: The results displayed that the hospital utilization rate in Indonesia's disadvantaged regions in 2023 was 1.5%. Concurrently, the percentage of NHI members stood at 74.5%. Meanwhile, based on NHI membership, people with an NHI membership are 3.01 times more likely to utilize the hospital than those without (95% CI 2.58-3.50). Furthermore, the study found seven control variables related to hospital utilization: residence type, age, gender, marital status, education level, employment status, and wealth status.
Conclusion: The study concluded that NHI membership influences hospital utilization in disadvantaged areas in Indonesia. People with NHI membership were three times more likely to perform hospital utilization.