CONSUMER AWARENESS AND PERCEPTION OF NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME (NHIS) HEALTH SERVICE

                        Abstract

National health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a health care scheme established by the Federal Government of Nigeria in 2005 for better healthcare delivery to its populace. The main objective of this study was to evaluate consumers’ awareness and perception of National health insurance scheme (NHIS) healthcare service in Yaba local government area of Lagos state. The respondents consist of students of University of Lagos (Unilag) and working populace who are adults above the age of eighteen (18) years in Yaba Local Government Areas (LGA’s) of Lagos State and have enrolled into the scheme. Five point Likert scale questionnaire was designed for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics.  Hypotheses were tested using chi-square at 5% level of significance. Based on the analysis, some findings and conclusions were made which includes that there was thorough awareness given to the beneficiaries of the scheme as to how contributions are made, equitable distribution of healthcare cost among parent income groups and increased consumption of medical services can lead to improved health status. Based on the findings ,it was recommended that more of health promotion effort such as seminars, conferences and workshops be organized and more health literature should be disseminated to enlighten the enrollee more on the operations of the scheme and as to enrollee’s perception of service delivery efficiency, government should introduce better monitoring of the service providers’ level of efficiency so that the present score does not drop and that the body in charge of treating patients should be a recognized professional in the field of health security and maintenance.