Abstract
Ghana has initiated various health sector reforms over the past decades aimed at strengthening institutions, improving the overall health system and increasing access to healthcare services by all groups of people. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) instituted in 2005, is an innovative system aimed at making health care more accessible to people who need it. Currently, there is a growing amount of concern about the capacity of the NHIS to make quality health care accessible to its clients. A number of studies have concentrated on the effect of health insurance status on demand for health services, but have been quiet on supply side issues. The main aim of this study is to examine the overall satisfaction with health care among the insured and uninsured under the NHIS. The second aim is to explore the relations between overall satisfaction and socio-demographic characteristics, health insurance and the various dimensions of quality of care.This study employs logistic regression using household survey data in three districts in Ghana covering the 3 ecological zones (coastal, forest and savannah). It identifies the service quality factors that are important to patients’ satisfaction and examines their links to their health insurance status.The results indicate that a higher proportion of insured patients are satisfied with the overall quality of care compared to the uninsured. The key predictors of overall satisfaction are waiting time, friendliness of staff and satisfaction of the consultation process. These results highlight the importance of interpersonal care in health care facilities. Feedback from patients’ perception of health services and satisfaction surveys improve the quality of care provided and therefore effort must be made to include these findings in future health policies.
Highlights
Healthcare financing, one of the major channels to access to health care in developing countries, has gone through many reforms in Ghana
The main aim of this study is to examine the overall satisfaction with health care among the insured and uninsured under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)
Past reforms in the health sector resulted in inequities in access to basic primary healthcare leading to the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in 2005
Summary
Healthcare financing, one of the major channels to access to health care in developing countries, has gone through many reforms in Ghana. The overriding aim of this institutional intervention is to reduce financial barriers to utilization of healthcare by reducing direct payments for services at health facilities. This is intended to narrow the inequalities engendered by the previous system which relied mainly on user fees. Ghana has joined the ranks of a number of developed countries such as Germany who have implemented this form of social health insurance in a bid to ensure access to care. The current efforts world-wide is to move from systems that depend mainly on user fees to prepayment and risk pooling (WHO, 2010)
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