Determinants of national hospital insurance fund acceptance on the self-employed in Mathare constituency-Nairobi city county
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Date
2015
Authors
Lung'e, Patrick Meeme
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
This study was meant to address the issue of health insurance penetration, especially by the
National Hospital Insurance Fund), among the low income groups of the society in Kenya. As
such, the researcher is interested in the self-employed group, for instance, people who have no
formal employment hence are not salaried. This group currently constitutes the largest
percentage of the socio-economic groups in Kenya and Africa at large. This research takes
particular concern in Universal Health, which is one of the main goals set forth in the
Millennium Development Goals. According to the discussions of the Millenium Development
Goals, each government was required to allocate fifteen per cent of their national budget to
provision of health care . Kenya has not achieved this requirement to date, with only 5.4 per cent
of the GDP allocated to healthcare provision every year (Mwaura, 2007). The new constitution
recognizes National Hospital Insurance Fund as one of the key pillars of affordable healthcare
provision in Kenya (Constitution of Kenya, 2010). This being a social insurance scheme, it is
expected to be easily accessible and affordable to most Kenyans. However, most Kenyans have
not listed for the healthcare insurance scheme yet. This research will primarily endeavour to
establish the factors that are hindering the penetration of this healthcare insurance scheme in the
Kenyan societies, with special interest to the self-employed group. This study will be conducted
in randomly selected hospitals in Mathare Constituency, Nairobi County. An extensive literature
review will be carried out basing on: Structure of the Kenyan Healthcare Provision System;
Structure and Roles of National Hospital Insurance Fund; and Challenges to Healthcare
Insurance. The research will target 5 medical personnel, 5 National Hospital Insurance Fund
personnel and 40 self-employed patients from each of the two selected hospitals. This will make
up a total sample size of 100 respondents. The study will employ self-administered
questionnaires for each of the target respondents. The researcher will ascertain the validity of the
questionnaire as a tool of research that will be employed in this study by way of a pilot study he
will be required to carry out prior to this research. The researcher will obtain a research permit
from the National Council for Science and Technology as required the law then go to selected
hospitals to .adrninister the questionnaires for the purpose of data collection. The raw data
collected will then be cleaned and edited in readiness for statistical processing using SPSS and
MS excel spread sheets. The processed data will be represented in form of charts and graphs
generated from the MS Excel spread sheets or SPSS software for ease of analysis. Data will be
analyzed based on the prepositions of the Maslow's theory of basic needs and Conventional
health insurance theory. For comparison between different socio-economic groups and
educational levels, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) will be performed. Findings will be
valid at within 5% significance. This data will be expected- to demonstrate the-challenges facing
the uptake of National Hospital Insurance Fund in Mathare Constituency, and come up with
suggestions on how to improve the rate of National Hospital Insurance Fund uptake. The
recommendations generated will help guide policy making.
Description
A Research Project Submitted to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Partial
fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Masters of Public Policy and
Administration, 2015