Gender differences in perceived quality care in health facilities:implications for Ghana's national health insurance scheme

In Ghana, a number of interventions have been implemented to ensure universal access to quality healthcare services and gender equity in healthcare access. One of these key interventions is the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in 2003 to ensure Ghanaians, especially women and children have access to good quality care. Notwithstanding these interventions, client experiences of quality care standards are still generally dissatisfactory. Previous studies explored client-perceived quality healthcare services in Ghana but not much has been investigated on gender differences in perceived quality care and implications on health insurance participation. This paper examined differences in the perceptions of women and men in quality of healthcare services in Ghana. A baseline survey was conducted in randomly selected 1,920 households in 16 rural and urban districts in two regions of Ghana. Data cleaning is completed and analysis ongoing. Logistic regression is conducted on the male and female sub-samples to ascertain whether there are differences in perceived service quality and how this influences (re)enrollment in health insurance. It is expected that the findings would inform policy makers in gender mainstreaming in quality improvement and participation in health insurance services.