Awareness and utilisation of national health insurance scheme by healthcare workers in southwest Nigeria

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the awareness, utilization and perception of healthcare workers towards National Health Insurance Scheme in a tertiary hospital.Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study among healthcare workers in a tertiary health institution in Ile-Ife Nigeria. The study population included all the staff in the hospital excluding the doctors and the convenience sampling technique was employed in the selection of study participants. A well-structured self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data from consenting participants at their duty posts and analysed using SPSS v20.0.Results: Study recorded 87.9% (246/280) response rate and over 60% (160) was within 19–38years and mean age was 35 years. More females (54.9% and 85.9%) than males (45.1% and 76.6%) participated in the study and registered with the Scheme respectively.Conclusion: Awareness of the workers was found to be fair, the perception was good and utilization not very encouraging. The study concluded that gender, marital status, having children and educational level were not significantly associated with awareness, perception and utilization of NHIS by healthcare workers.Keywords: health insurance, healthcare workers, awareness, perception, utilisation