Attracting Poor People to Public Health Facilities to Access Free Health Care: An Assessment of the Integrated Social Health Protection Scheme

In this paper, we report on the ability of Cambodia's Integrated Social Health Protection Scheme (iSHPS) to attract eligible poor Health Equity Fund beneficiaries (HEFB) to initiate care seeking at public health facilities as well as their degree of financial risk protection. We assess these ef...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2017
Main Authors: Jacobs, Bart, Bajracharya, Ashish, Saha, Jyotirmoy, Chlea, Chhorvann, Bellows, Ben, Antunes, Adelio Fernandes
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Developing countries
Government
Health care policy
LDCs
Population Council
Poverty
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:In this paper, we report on the ability of Cambodia's Integrated Social Health Protection Scheme (iSHPS) to attract eligible poor Health Equity Fund beneficiaries (HEFB) to initiate care seeking at public health facilities as well as their degree of financial risk protection. We assess these effects by comparing care seeking and out-of-pocket expenditures for the illness episode of HEFB in iSHPS areas with HEFB from other provinces where the Health Equity Fund (HEF) covered only hospital services or where HEF covered health centre and hospital services. For this assessment, data were collected from 1,636 matched HEFB households in two health districts with iSHPS and two other health districts without iSHPS between October 2013 and Feb ruary 2014. In the two latter districts, some health centres were not covered by the HEF while other health centres were included, allowing additional comparison to assess the effect of health centre inclusion on care seeking by HEFB. Apart from HEF, these control districts did not have any notable interventions aimed at enabling financial access to public health care services for HEFB. Only illness episodes during the month preceding interview were considered. Costs involved only direct medical and non-medical out-of-pocket expenses related to care seeking for the concerned illness episode.