The burden of the current curative expenditure of injury in Dalian, China—a study based on the “system of health accounts 2011”

BACKGROUND: Injury is one of the major public health problems and causes more than 5 million deaths in the world annually. Cases of specific types of injury are life-threatening and heavily-burdened to individuals and society. This study was aimed to assess the financial burden of injury on patients. METHODS: A total of 565 medical institutions were selected with multistage stratified cluster random sampling, containing 152,553 valid samples. Subsequently, the distribution of injury current curative expenditure (CCE) in different dimensions (including age and site of injury) was analyzed under the framework of System of Health Accounts 2011 (SHA 2011) using the established database. RESULTS: In China, both urban and rural injury mortality rates showed an upward trend of more than 5 percentage points from 2006 to 2016. In Dalian, the CCE of injury reached 1572.73 million RMB, accounting for 7.45% of the total CCE. Those aged 15–24 reported larger proportion of CCE than the other age groups. As for the injuries in body parts, injuries occurred to the spine, lower limb, head and foreign body cost most. CONCLUSIONS: Dalian has a relatively serious burden of injury costs. The essential and primary goal is to reduce the cost. Young people should pay attention to protect their head and limbs from injury, and related government sectors should implement preventive and educative measures. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-10164-6.