Objective      To investigate the status of financial risk in the hypertension patients living in Chongqing rural area and provide some suggestions in the aspects of allocation of health resources

governance and management of chronic diseases

and reimbursement of rural residents’ basic health insurance. Methods      Based on the results of the fifth batch of National Health Service Survey (NHSS) in the year of 2013

the situation of health service utilization

especially of outpatient service

was described statistically according to these patients’ socioeconomic demographic characteristics. Then the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) was used to analyze the medical expenses and effects on the family economy. Logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the main causes of CHE

and relative risk (RR) of medical expense  was used to study the financial risk attributable to the disease among the patients with different income levels.  Results      The patients’  educational level

their blood pressure conditions

as well as the attention of the illness affected their utilization of outpatient service. Compared with primary medical institutions

medical settings at prefecture- or country-levels would require more health expenditure when they were hospitalized. Among patients using health service

28.4% of the households of hypertension patients existed CHE because of the out-of-pocket health expenditure. Elder age and hospital stays made them entrap in CHE more commonly. According to the RR

the patients in lower-income group had higher disease economic risk than the other groups. Except the patients from the high-income group

other patients all faced the economic risk for hospitalization. Conclusion       Compared with visiting lower-level medical institutes

visiting clinic and being hospitalized in higher level health institutions becomes the main reasons for the hypertension patients’  economic burden. Some of patients take treatment seriously but ignore prevention

and these behaviors may increase their financial risk attributable to the disease. The awareness of hypertension should be strengthened and standardized treatment habits should be developed in the patients. Though some patients mainly rely on outpatient treatment

it will also bring greater economic risk for the lower-income patients. It is suggested to speed up the construction of primary health institutions

make the port of health service move forward

and improve the patients’ awareness of the disease through effective implementation of chronic disease management strategies in order to reduce the economic risk of the patients. What’s more

the compensation standard of basic medical insurance for rural residents should be promoted for chronic disease outpatient expenses to provide strong economic support for the patients.