Health Insurance of the Ga District of the Greater Accra Region; an operational feasibility study
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Date
2004-11-23
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Abstract
The survey is a feasibility study of establishing a Health Insurance Scheme in the Ga District. The main objective of the study was to determine the ability of residents,
especially the rural folk to access a health insurance scheme. The method used was cross-sectional descriptive study, in which quantitative and qualitative data was collected
In the study, 59.2% of head of households were males and 40.8% females. The modal class for the age of head of households was between 20 - 29 years and the mean household size was 3.98 almost four (4), making them good potential clients (Weber and Normand, 1994).
About 80 percent (80.1%) have a household expenditure of one million to ten million cedis and only 0.6% of households had expenditure below the poverty line while zero percent was below the extreme poverty line. Meanwhile, income patterns reflected that, about five percent (5.2%) were below extreme poverty line per annum and 20.8% was below the poverty line (GLSS 1999). This meant that almost all respondents could afford to pay and access Health Insurance.
However, the people go to a health facility only when quality of care received is good (88.7%) the health facilities are geographically accessible but would choose to seek health care from other places like drug stores (98.4%) because of affordability.
Almost ninety-eight percent (97.9%) of respondents were willing to join a health insurance scheme provided the management of the scheme was transparent.
In conclusion, the residents of the Ga district have the ability to access health insurance provided they have geographic accessibility to health facilities, the quality of care rendered at health facilities is good and management of the scheme is transparent.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Community
Health, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health Sciences
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial
fulfilment of the requirements for the award of MSc.degree in Health Services Planning and Management, 2004