Health Insurance Status And Client Perception Of Quality Of Care At Kwahu Government Hospital

ABSTRACT

Background: The National Health Insurance Scheme was introduced in Ghana in 2003 to improve access to healthcare through financial risk protection. Since then, quality of care received by clients of the scheme has dominated public debates. This study examined client’s perception of healthcare quality based on their NHIS status at Kwahu Government Hospital. 

Method: The study used descriptive cross-sectional design and questionnaires were used to collect data from 118 respondents who were selected through simple random sampling. Descriptive statistics, tables, pie charts, mean, and standard deviation were employed to describe respondent’s socio-background, and health insurance status. In order to analyze the respondent perception of quality, student t-test was employed to analyze data.

Results: The result of the study indicated that categories of respondents perceived service quality to be average.  Further, clients perceived individual attention provided by health worker as most important to them while appearance of the hospital environment (neatness) was of least important. There was statistically significant difference between perception of quality between insured and uninsured clients.

Conclusion: Overall, clients expected better quality of health services than what they actually received. Moreover, the specific indicators for the major components of the SERVQUAL model of quality of care had little difference in healthcare in reference to their NHIS status.