Pattern of utilization of the school health insurance programme in alexandria

Utilization of health Insurance services by children can be influenced by many factors, such as health care need, availability of transportation, and geographic access to care. Utilization rates may be affected by certain barriers which include: physical unavailability geographical, financial, psychological and socio-cultural or organizational barriers. This study was carried out to study the pattern of utilization of services provided by the Students' Health Insurance Programme in Alexandria by preparatory school students. A cross-sectional descriptive study was performed to identify the understudied variables. A sample of 1121 school students was included. They were from general preparatory schools (public and private) who utilized any health service within the last 6 months prior to the start of the study. A relevant questionnaire was designed for data collection through an interview with the student's parent during a visit to the school clinic. It was found that the highest percentage of public school students preferred to obtain medical services at the school physician clinic (51.2%) whereas, the highest percentage of private school students preferred to obtain medical services at a private physician (74.0%). The highest percentage of both public and private school students had knowledge regarding the time of service (47.0% and 36.5%, respectively). As regards public schools the highest mean satisfaction score was for the dimension of school physician examination (2.20+/-0.6), whereas, the highest mean satisfaction score for private school students was for the dimension of referral procedures to the specialist (2.30+/-0.5). It was concluded that accessibility barriers towards the programme could be handled through, distribution of brochures at the beginning of every scholastic year and further simplification of administrative procedures and paper work cycles adopted by the programme.