Members’ Satisfaction With Health Services Delivered By Community Health Insurance Fund (Chif) In Kyela District, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

This research was done to analyze members‟ satisfaction with health services delivered by Community Health Insurance Fund (CHIF) in Kyela district with the specific objectives to: document the modality by which CHIF provides health services, determine the effects of CHIF services on members‟ health care utilization and financial protection and evaluate CHIF members‟ satisfaction with the health care services. The study population was CHIF beneficiaries, and data were collected from January to March 2012 from a sample of 160 CHIF beneficiaries. The results showed that 71.2% of the respondents got the information on health services provided by CHIF through Kyela FM, public meetings and brochures. They also showed that there were positive effects of CHIF on membership to health care utilization and financial protection. About the hypotheses of the study, it was found that the overall points scored on a 90-point scale by which satisfaction was measured were 70.5, which implies that generally the beneficiaries were very much satisfied with the services. However, the level of satisfaction varied depending on various factors, including access to information about CHIF. Using one-way ANOVA, there were significant differences in the number of points scored on the satisfaction scale among people with various levels of access to CHIF information (F = 3.052, p = 0.019). Accordingly, it was concluded that the beneficiaries of CHIF were satisfied with the services. It was also recommended that CHIF services should be scaled up concomitantly with more dissemination of information about CHIF products.