摘要：Scientific evidence shows that physical inactivity is a cause and remedy for major public health problems as well as many diseases are more common among physically inactive people than those who are regularly engaged in some physical activity. It has also been shown that physical activity has a positive impact on quality of life and work efficiency, a preventative role in the emergence of longlasting illness, mental symptoms and poor overall health status of the working population. In recent scientific studies, physical inactivity is defined as a global pandemic associated with a number of chronic non-communicable diseases and is one of the major causes lost of healthy years of life and premature death. Also, is responsible for the significant economic burden of worldwide health. It is estimated that physical inactivity contributes to an increase of 1-4% of total direct health costs while the economic burden of physical inactivity varies among countries. Since all the researches of physical activity among Croatian popualtion have showed an unsatisfactory state of physical activity, the aim of this paper was to make the first fifteen years analysis of the most significant natural and financial indicators of the healthcare costs in the Republic of Croatia with determined trends (increase or decrease) in the period from 2002 to 2016. The results of this research show that the number of insured persons in the Republic of Croatia in the period from 2002 to 2016 remained almost at the same level and while total healthcare costs increased by 66%. The structure of the most significant costs (expenditures) shows the highest increase in the cost of especially expensive medicines (5.392%), hospital healthcare costs (114%) and prescription medicines (59%), the highest number of recipes (106%) and the average number of issued recipes per insured person (103%). The results of this research can be useful as an initial analysis to manage the healthcare costs in order to reduce a part of the healthcare costs, especially in those costs that can be influenced by increased physical activity.
关键词：health; physical activity; prescription medicines; especially expensive medicines; sick leave
