Out-of-pocket PHC expenditure estimates how much are households in each country are spending on primary health care directly out of pocket. It estimates the share of out of pocket payment of current primary health care expenditures.

The denominator, current PHC expenditure, includes government, non-government, and private sector sources of PHC spending. Current PHC expenditure includes general outpatient care, dental care, home-based curative care, outpatient and home-based long-term care, and preventive care (IEC, immunisation, early disease detection, healthy condition monitoring, disease control programme).  To this subset of health services are added medical goods (medicines, glasses, hearing aids)1. Note that capital investments are excluded.