Satisfaction Level of National Health Insurance Beneficiaries in Lagos, Nigeria

Background: Health insurance schemes have been widely introduced during this last decade in many African countries, which have strived for improvements in health service provision and the promotion of health care utilization. Client satisfaction with health service provision during the implementation of health insurance schemes has often been neglected since numerous activities take place concurrently. The satisfaction of enrollees and its influencing factors have been providing evidence which have assisted in policy and decision making. The objective is to determine the enrollee’s satisfaction with health service provision under a health insurance scheme and the factors which influence the satisfaction
Methods: Distribution of questionnaires was conducted using the standard RAND satisfaction questions instrument assessing the technical quality, interpersonal relationship, communication, financial aspect, accessibility, time spent with the doctor and the overall general satisfaction at the Federal ministry of education and defense. Data was collected from 24th of July – 2nd of September 2011 with convenient sample of 236. SPSS 18.0 was used for the data analysis.
Results: A high satisfaction rate with health insurance scheme was observed (53.4%).The average overall satisfaction score, measured by the PSQ-50 questionnaire, was 3.49 ±1.1 from a maximum of 5. Communication (P= 0.002), Financial aspect (P=0.000), Accessibility aspect (0.026), Time spent (P=0.007) were found to positively influence the general satisfaction of enrollees. Length of employment, marital status, salary income, hospital visits, health status, and education slightly influenced satisfaction of enrollees.
Conclusion: Although the overall satisfaction was found to be above average there is potential for improvement, therefore, the NHIS should improve on the six dimensions identified in this study.