IJERPH, Vol. 18, Pages 10914: Informal Payments by Patients in Central and Eastern Europe during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Institutional Perspective

IJERPH, Vol. 18, Pages 10914: Informal Payments by Patients in Central and Eastern Europe during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Institutional Perspective International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health doi: 10.3390/ijerph182010914 Authors: Adrian V. Horodnic Colin C. Williams Răzvan Ionuț Drugă Cristian Incaltarau Confronted with a global pandemic, public healthcare systems are under pressure, making access to healthcare services difficult for patients. This provides fertile ground for using illegal practices such as informal payments to gain access. This paper aims to evaluate the use of informal payments by patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and the institutions that affect the prevalence of this practice. Various measurements of formal and informal institutions are here investigated, namely the acceptability of corruption, the level of trust, transparency, and performance of the healthcare system. To do so, a logistic regression of 10,859 interviews with patients conducted across 11 Central and Eastern Europe countries in October–December 2020 is employed. The finding is that there are large disparities between countries in the prevalence of informal payments, and that the practice is more likely to occur where there are poorer formal and informal institutions, namely higher acceptability of corruption, lower trust in authorities, lower perceived transparency in handling the COVID-19 pandemic, difficult access to, and poor quality of, hea...
Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research