ASTANA – A recent report revealed people in Kazakhstan increased their spending on treatment 22 percent, reported finprom.kz.
Approximately 14 percent of the total volume of medical services were covered by patients themselves who paid 42.8 billion tenge (US$131.4 million) in total. Their spending hiked 22.4 percent within a year, indicating the biggest increase.
Demand for medical services has been steadily growing, according to the report. The volume of medical services provided between 2012 and 2016 rose 45.7 percent from 319.9 billion tenge (US$982.7 million) in 2012 up to 1 trillion tenge (US$3 billion) in 2016.
Most medical services remain funded by the state, which allocated 237.1 billion tenge (US$728.3 million) in the fourth quarter of 2017, accounting for 78.9 percent of the total volume of medical services.
In the last three months of last year alone, the volume of medical services grew 4.1 percent by 11.8 billion tenge (US$36.25 million), reaching 300.7 billion tenge (US$923.7 million).
The East Kazakhstan region was found to have the highest demand for medical services last year with a 14.6 percent increase totalling 19.9 billion tenge (US$61.1 million) in contrast to 17.4 billion tenge (US$53.45 million) in the previous year.
The Almaty region and Astana also top the ranking in terms of the volume of medical services, with 12.6 percent and 10.3 percent growth, respectively.
The Zhambyl and Pavlodar regions demonstrate the opposite pattern with declining volumes of health services provided in the regions.
