Abstract:

Objective - To determine the public awareness of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) among patients accessing health care in Supreme Faith Hospital, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.

Study design and Setting - A cross-sectional study design that made use of quantitative survey method involving data collection and analysis.

Participants - 120 voluntary adults who access health care services at Supreme Faith Hospital, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.

Method - A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to participants who also consented to the survey. A cross-sectional study was deemed fit for this research because it enables any desired data to be collected at one point in time.

Results – The study revealed that a greater number of respondents i.e. 82 (68.3%) were aware of the existence of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) but only 38(31.7%) were enrolees in a hospital setting which is accredited to providing health care services under NHIS. There were more females (64.2%) than males (35.8%) among the respondents. A greater number of respondents were educated; Secondary (36.7%) and Tertiary education (48.3%), while Primary education (8.0%) and none/others (10.0%) were much lesser. There was weak statistical significant finding between education and awareness of NHIS (p=0.045).

Conclusions – The awareness of NHIS was high among patients who were accessing health care services in an accredited facility in Nigeria. However, the number of enrolees among them was much lesser than expected. It is recommended that effort should be geared towards improving the rate of enrolment process, especially in the face of the heavy burden of out-of-payment expenditure in health care.

Keywords: Enrolee, Healthcare, Health insurance, Nigeria, Out-of-pocket payment, Services.

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