Health service utilisation of rural-to-urban migrants in Guangzhou, China: does employment status matter?

OBJECTIVE: To describe the self-reported health status and service utilisation of employed, retired and unemployed migrants in Guangzhou, a megacity in southern China.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study adapted from the National Health Service Survey was conducted between September and December in 2014. Based on the distribution of occupation of migrants, multistage sampling was used to recruit individuals. Logistic regression was applied to explore the factors influencing their service utilisation.

RESULTS: Of 2906 respondents, 76.6% were employed, 9.2% retired and 14.2% unemployed. Only 8.1% reported having an illness in the previous 2 weeks, and 6.5% reported having been hospitalised in the previous year. Employed migrants had the lowest recent physician consultation rate (3.4%) and the lowest annual hospitalisation rate (4.5%) (P < 0.05); unemployed migrants had the highest rates (6.8% and 14.5% respectively, P < 0.05). Retired migrants were more likely to return to their hometown for health care (8.6%) than employed (1.5%) and unemployed migrants (3.4%) (P < 0.05). After adjusting for age and gender, employment status remained significant in explaining the recent two-week treatment-seeking behaviour of migrants (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION: Disparity of service utilisation continues to be a problem for migrants due to the poor health awareness, lack of time and inconvenience of medical insurance reimbursement. Employed migrants make the least use of health services.