Clients expect more from health-care providers

A research on clients’ perception of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has shown that clients expects more in terms of quality and inter-personal relationship from their healthcare and insurance providers.

The research also showed that clients expected insurers and healthcare providers to consider their socio-cultural background when attending to their health needs.

This was made known in Accra at a two-day dissemination workshop on a research on how to ensure the effective implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Organised by Towards a Client-oriented Health Insurance system in Ghana (COHESION), it was aimed at enhancing and sustaining health insurance participation in Ghana through improved client-oriented quality care.

Cohesion project

The four-year project, which started in 2011 and will end in 2016, was undertaken in selected NHIS facilities in the Western and Greater Accra regions.

The dissemination exercise on the multi-year, multi-site research was to provide a platform for recommendations to policy makers on clients, insurers and care providers in relation to NHIS.

Explaining the rationale behind the project, Co-Project Investigator, Dr Daniel Kojo Arhinful, said although the NHIS reached major achievements of 65 per cent enrolment by 2009, it faced various challenges, which included securing sustained quality of health care, retention of clients in the insurance programme and adequate claims handling systems.

All these challenges, he said, posed potential risks to the financial sustainability of the programme.

Dr Arhinful, who is also with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) of the University of Ghana, Legon, said the research was necessitated  by the fact that feedback from clients with respect to NHIS services was minimal and insufficiently reflected in the current implementation of the NHIS.

understanding clients' perception 

According to him, “placing the client in a central position of this research implies that we attempt to understand the clients' perception and practices of health care in the context of the community in which they live.”

He said the research showed that the NHIS was keen on results of clients' perceptions and ready to bring about improvements to its system.

A Deputy Director, Provider and Clients Relations Department of the NHIS, Ms Adelaide Akowuah-Bunatal, said the NHIS was working at reducing some of the bottlenecks which confronted the smooth operation of the scheme.

She said to ensure that clients get optimum service, the NHIS would by December this year deploy some staff members to investigate some facilities to ensure that they were doing the right things.