The Cost of Prenatal Care Services in the City of Aydın: A Cross-Sectional Study

Aim: To determine the cost of prenatal careservices provided to pregnant women in the city of Aydın, Turkey.

Method: This cross-sectional study wasconducted over the period of February-December 2016 at the Aydın Maternity andChildren’s Hospital. The convenience sampling method was used to recruit 403women who were in weeks 36-42 of pregnancy into the study. Data for the studywere collected with the Descriptive Information Form and the Prenatal CareService Usage Form. Descriptivestatistics, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to analyse data.

Results: It was determined that thepregnant women were followed up an average total number of 10.94±4.30 times and97.0% received care at the state hospital. It was found that for each pregnantwoman, the mean total cost of prenatal care was $138.77±$93.44, the sum paid bygeneral health insurance was $96.12±$46.38, individual contributions stood at$25.05±$10.43 and payments made to the private institutions was$110.32±$142.31. It was observed thatthe total prenatal care cost was not influenced by some of the characteristicsof the pregnant women.

Conclusion: It was revealed in the studythat most pregnant women received prenatal care at the state hospitals and atfamily health centers and that they had approximately 11 prenatal carefollow-ups amounting to a total mean cost of about $139. A contribution can bemade to making prenatal care more cost-effective by organizing the number andscope of prenatal care sites on the basis of the individual characteristics ofrisk factors pregnant women.

Cite this article as: Özvurmaz, S.,Karaçam, Z, Ünay, V. (2019). The cost of prenatal care services in the City ofAydın: A cross-sectional study. FNJN Florence Nightingale Journal of Nursing,27(3), 253-262.