Abstract

Over 40% of hospitalized Indians borrows heavily or sell assets to cover hospital expenses. It pushes 3-4% of population below the poverty line every year. Health insurance could be a way of removing the financial barriers and improving accessibility to quality medical care by the poor and also an effective social security mechanism. Only 10% of Indians have some form of insurance mostly inadequate. This study was therefore undertaken to ascertain the profile of the patients, their awareness about health insurance and percentage of people who avail the benefits of various health insurance schemes and to find the reasons as to why people do not enroll for any of the health insurance scheme to safeguard the unexpected expenditure arising due to ailments. It is a prospective, cross sectional study carried out in a regional tertiary care hospital situated in one of the states of North East India. A pilot study was conducted to standardize the questionnaire. In the final study 200 pro-forms were administered to patients in various specialties/ super-specialties of the hospital.167 pro-forms were returned to the investigators and two were found incomplete and therefore not informative and rejected. Majority of the respondents belong to Meghalaya and 49.70% are Christians.47.27% are males and 52.75% females.25.45% females are aware as compared to 21.82% males. Respondents from Meghalaya state are more aware (29.70%) as compared to respondents from other states. 31-40years age group respondents were found more aware as compared to other age groups. Majority of aware respondents were found to be Christians. Ironically

Less educated were found more aware about health insurance as compared to graduates and post graduates. Among all aware respondents of different professions, majority (16.36%) are of unemployed group. In conclusion awareness among people about health insurance is even less than 50% which is very less to achieve any target to equalize the accessibility of patients to quality health irrespective of their economic services status.

Keywords: Health Insurance, health insurance awareness, health insurance barriers, tertiary care hospital.