New Health Management Findings from Accra Described (Contribution of the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme to Inequality in Healthcare Utilisation): Health and Medicine – Health Management

2023 APR 03 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health & Medicine Business Daily -- Current study results on health management have been published. According to news originating from Accra, Ghana, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Inequality in healthcare utilisation contributes to socio-economic disparities in health outcomes.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Department of Banking and Finance: “The government of Ghana rolled out the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as a pro-poor health policy to reduce the financial barrier to accessing healthcare to increase healthcare utilisation, especially among the poor. Evidence showed a pro-rich utilisation inequality in Ghana prior to the nationwide start of the NHIS in 2005. This article applied the concentration index and decomposition methods to the round six of the Ghana Living Standard Survey data to investigate the contribution of the NHIS to utilisation inequality. The results showed the rich to benefit more than the poor from the NHIS and the NHIS contributed to about half of the pro-rich utilisation inequality.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The NHIS increased utilisation but more so for the rich than the poor. A policy implication of the article is that pro-poorness of the NHIS might require separate NHIS schemes for the poor and non-poor to enable different policies implemented in the schemes to increase the distributional disparity of health subsidies in favour of the poor.”

For more information on this research see: Contribution of the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme to Inequality in Healthcare Utilisation. Journal of Health Management, 2023. The publisher for Journal of Health Management is SAGE Publications.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/09720634231153206.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Albert Opoku Frimpong, Department of Banking and Finance, University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana.

ORCID is an identifier for authors and includes bibliographic information. The following is ORCID information for the author of this research: Albert Opoku Frimpong (http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-9871).

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