Research plan of the Health Insurance System Research Office

Health care financing is a crucial component of the health care system. It aims to achieve fairness of financial contribution; payments to healthcare should be made according to ability to pay of individual household. There should not have any households that are bankrupted or stayed underline the poverty line due to spending on health care services. Apart from the ultimate goal of fair financial contribution, intermediate objectives of health care financing include allocative efficiency, technical efficiency, enabling access to care, equity in service utilization, and quality of services.

Universal Coverage Monitoring and Evaluation Project (UCME) was set up as a research plan of the Health System Research Institute (HSRI) after the introduction of Universal Coverage policy in Thailand. In 2005, the Health Insurance System Research Office (HISRO) was set up as a more permanent mechanism under HSRI in order to monitor and evaluate the Universal Coverage policy.

Objectives of HISRO

1. Developing information system and models for continuous monitoring and evaluation of the Thai health care financing and health care delivery systems.
2. Studying on research and development and evaluation research of health care service and health insurance systems in Thailand.
3. Developing and managing data bank for monitoring and evaluation of health care systems. As well as continuous feedback of information for learning process and system development.

Areas of research

In order to comply with the HSRI’s strategy in reducing inequity in health care, Health Insurance System Research Office (HISRO) has set four main research areas as follows:

1. Research on mechanisms to improve equity in health care financing system; this consists of research and development of standard benefit package; standard payment method and scale, equity in government subsidy to different health insurance, and equity in budget allocation.
2. Research on strategies to improve effectiveness of purchasing and paying health care providers; this include how to make services available and ease access for individuals, how to improve effective referral system, how to get better quality of health care and more responsive to social expectation while remains able to control the cost.
3. Research and development on primary care development, both urban and rural areas to improve standard and capacity of primary care level to provide effective health care services. Moreover, the payment methods adopted should empower primary care network research on good governance in health insurance focussing on claim process, information and accounting system, monitoring and evaluation of area‐based health care system, and auditing system.
4. Search on good governance in health insurance focussing on claim process, information and accounting system, monitoring and evaluation of area-based health care system, and auditing system.

Expected results

Followings are expected results from the Health Insurance System Research Office (HISRO):

1. Having appropriate indicators and information for monitoring and evaluation of health care financing and health care delivery systemsthat meet diverse needs of different stakeholders.
2. There is feedback information on various dimensions of health system performance to policy makers, health care administrators, health professional and health care providers, including the public.
3. Policy recommendations on development of financing mechanisms of the health insurance and health care financing system to improve equity and efficiency of the system.

Responsibility

• Dr. Samrit Srithamrongsawat

Contact

• admin@hisro.or.th

Web site

• www.hisro.or.th