Title: The social health security program

Biography:

Abstract

Introduction: The Social Health Security Program(SHSP) is a social protection program which aims to  access quality health care services and been in implementation  from 2016/17 fiscal year in Nepal. SHSP  prevent people from catastrophic expenditures for health in an equitable manner, accountability and quality in health care services.

Purposes: This research was intended to identify the barriers to SHI and to know the frequency of people practising the SHI policy.

Methodology: This was a descriptive, cross sectional study, conducted in seven districts hospitals of eastern Nepal among the people selected randomly irrespective of the gender, religion and cast. The study was conducted from December 2017-January 2018 for the data collection and analysis.

Results: Only 23.68% had knowledge about SHSP run by government and 75.26 % unaware of  SHSP run by government. Only few, 6.30% had received the SHI issued by government and 93.70 % had not received SHI policies till date. Most of them 14.5% paid themselves for their health scheme, 15.78% knew about the advantage of obtaining SHI while 84.22% people were unaware of various benefits of health insurance policies for the quality health care only 13.15% people had obtained social health security insurance policies from private company and 4.21% people had obtained policies from government.

Conclusion: There were less coverage on this health policy. The movement towards full SHI coverage is an incremental process, with systematic expansion over the transition period. Barriers affecting to meet the universal coverages need to be addressed.