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Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers

BACKGROUND: It has been 20 years since the introduction of health insurance in Sudan. This study was the first one that explored health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of the insurers. METHODS: This was a qualitative, exploratory, interview study. The sampling frame was the list of...

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Autores principales: Salim, Anas Mustafa Ahmed, Hamed, Fatima Hashim Mahmoud
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5768257/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29348914
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050312117752298
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author Salim, Anas Mustafa Ahmed
Hamed, Fatima Hashim Mahmoud
author_facet Salim, Anas Mustafa Ahmed
Hamed, Fatima Hashim Mahmoud
author_sort Salim, Anas Mustafa Ahmed
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: It has been 20 years since the introduction of health insurance in Sudan. This study was the first one that explored health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of the insurers. METHODS: This was a qualitative, exploratory, interview study. The sampling frame was the list of Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance institutions in Sudan. Participants were selected from the four Social Health Insurance institutions and from five Private Health Insurance companies. The study was conducted in January and February 2017. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with a convenient sample of key executives from the different health insurers. Ideas and themes were identified and analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: The result showed that universal coverage was not achieved despite long time presence of Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance in Sudan. All participants described their services as comprehensive. All participants have good perception of the quality of the services they provide, although none of them investigated customer satisfaction. The main challenges facing Social Health Insurance are achieving universal coverage, ensuring sustainability and recruitment of the informal sector and self-employed population. Consumers’ affordability of the premiums is the main obstacle for Private Health Insurance, while rising healthcare cost due to economic inflation is a challenge facing both Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance. CONCLUSION: In spite of the presence of Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance in Sudan, the country is still far from achieving universal coverage. Moreover, the sustainability of health insurance is questionable. The main reasons include low governmental financial resources and lack of affordability by beneficiaries especially for Private Health Insurance. This necessitates finding solutions to improve them or trying other types of health insurance. The quality of services provided by Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance was described as good, but no insurance in Sudan measured customer satisfaction as yet.
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spelling pubmed-57682572018-01-18 Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers Salim, Anas Mustafa Ahmed Hamed, Fatima Hashim Mahmoud SAGE Open Med Original Article BACKGROUND: It has been 20 years since the introduction of health insurance in Sudan. This study was the first one that explored health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of the insurers. METHODS: This was a qualitative, exploratory, interview study. The sampling frame was the list of Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance institutions in Sudan. Participants were selected from the four Social Health Insurance institutions and from five Private Health Insurance companies. The study was conducted in January and February 2017. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with a convenient sample of key executives from the different health insurers. Ideas and themes were identified and analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: The result showed that universal coverage was not achieved despite long time presence of Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance in Sudan. All participants described their services as comprehensive. All participants have good perception of the quality of the services they provide, although none of them investigated customer satisfaction. The main challenges facing Social Health Insurance are achieving universal coverage, ensuring sustainability and recruitment of the informal sector and self-employed population. Consumers’ affordability of the premiums is the main obstacle for Private Health Insurance, while rising healthcare cost due to economic inflation is a challenge facing both Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance. CONCLUSION: In spite of the presence of Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance in Sudan, the country is still far from achieving universal coverage. Moreover, the sustainability of health insurance is questionable. The main reasons include low governmental financial resources and lack of affordability by beneficiaries especially for Private Health Insurance. This necessitates finding solutions to improve them or trying other types of health insurance. The quality of services provided by Social Health Insurance and Private Health Insurance was described as good, but no insurance in Sudan measured customer satisfaction as yet. SAGE Publications 2018-01-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5768257/ /pubmed/29348914 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050312117752298 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Article
Salim, Anas Mustafa Ahmed
Hamed, Fatima Hashim Mahmoud
Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers
title Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers
title_full Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers
title_fullStr Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers
title_full_unstemmed Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers
title_short Exploring health insurance services in Sudan from the perspectives of insurers
title_sort exploring health insurance services in sudan from the perspectives of insurers
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5768257/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29348914
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050312117752298
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