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

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

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

Results: It was determined that the pregnant women were followed up an average total number of 10.94±4.30 times and 97.0% received care at the state hospital. It was found that for each pregnant woman, the mean total cost of prenatal care was $138.77±$93.44, the sum paid by general 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 that the total prenatal care cost was not influenced by some of the characteristics of the pregnant women.

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