Health Care System

A “system” may be described as a complex of interacting components together with the relationships among them that permit the identification of a boundary-maintaining entity or process, (Laszlo & Krippner, 1998). What sets apart a health system is that its purpose is concerned with people’s health. A health system has many components. It includes Ministries of Health; healthcare professionals; patients, families, and communities; healthcare facilities; pharmaceutical companies, and other organizations that each play an important role in the promotion, restoration and maintenance of health, (The World Health Report, 2000). Countries all over the world use different types of healthcare systems based on their economic state and the level of organization.

The United States of America (U.S.A.) health care system is funded by both public and private insurers. In the U.S.A. the government and private insurer companies serve two functions in terms of funding. These functions are the collection of money for health care and the reimbursement of health service providers. The unique feature of the U.S.A. system is that it is funded mostly by private insurers and not public insurers. According to a study by Chua (2006), “in 2003, 62% of non-elderly Americans received private employer-sponsored insurance, and 5% purchased insurance on the private non group (individual) market. 15% were enrolled in public insurance programs like Medicaid and 18% were uninsured. Elderly individuals aged 65 or over are almost uniformly enrolled in

According to Atinga, Adjei, Aseno-Boadi and Mensah (2012) user fees has a negative effect on the health care system as well as the persons using the health care system. According to Atinga, et al, (2012) the use of user fees only provided a small benefit to the institution for the essential services given when compared to social health insurance. This region was fraught with an inadequate budgetary support and as a result user fees being inadequate subjugated the hospital to medical supply shortage; dysfunctional medical equipment; weak management systems and poor health professional motivation. The hospitals were also using more resources than they could afford to maintain since patients were becoming more aware about the importance of taking care of their health. As a result there has been an increased interest in the discontinuation of user fees and a movement towards the utilization of social health insurance. A study was therefore conducted to investigate the effects of migration from user fees to social health insurance and to exploring the prospects and challenges for hospital management. This study was a qualitative explorative study of fifteen (15) accredited district hospitals which were selected from five of Ghana’s ten administrative regions. A semi-structured interview guide was designed to solicit information from key informants