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A Starter Kit to Thai Universal Coverage Scheme: a documentary series

Thai UHC overview Identifying beneficiaries How the system works Resources allocation Benefits and development Interesting materials

2002 marks a great leapt in public health insurance in Thailand given it is the year the National Health Insurance Act 2002 was enacted entitling every Thai citizen to fair and accessible healthcare. This leads to the establishment of Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS), managed by the National Health Security Office (NHSO), which covers Thai citizen whom previously was not under any public health insurance scheme. Nowadays, 99.95% of Thai citizen is covered by public health insurance schemes.

This documentary mini-series tells the story and system behind the success UCS in Thailand with experiences that can be shared with public health insurance scheme managers around the world.

Part 1

Get to know public health insurance schemes in Thailand

EP1: Where there is a will, there is a way

Public health insurance in Thailand started a century ago, but universal health coverage (UHC) was only made possible lately through collaborative movements of different sectors. Get to know more about the development of Thai public health insurance in this episode.

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Part 2

Identify the UCS beneficiaries

EP2: 13 is the magic number

Identifying and enrolling beneficiaries can be a big challenge for many countries. Thailand had faced with the same concern but have overcome it using the 13-digit citizen identification number. This helped sorted the issue of people being insured by multiple public health insurance, support seamless enrollment, and many more.

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Part 3

How the system works upon a beneficiary’s health facility visit

EP3: ID card = Keycard!

In UCS, primary health care facilities act as a gatekeeper. Every beneficiary can only visit the facility they registered to but can be referred to a higher level facility if needed. Citizen identification card is all that is needed for such visits given the system operates based on the 13-digit identification number.

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Part 4

Ensuring quality care for every Thai Baht invested

EP4: Not ‘how much’ but ‘how to spend’

Being a low- and middle-income country, Thailand has limited budget for UCS. To achieve good health at low cost, NHSO need to allocate the budget efficiently and effectively. Watch the following VDO to learn how the budget is managed using what mechanism, and how the benefits are selected.

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Part 5

Getting feedback for better service provision

EP5: Feedback is fuel

Under the UCS, there are broad range of benefits provided. To keep the benefits being responsive to changing landscape of health interventions and technologies as well as beneficiary’s needs, NHSO continuously develop the benefits package using inputs and complaints from beneficiaries. Watch the VDO below to learn how.

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Part 6

Interesting materials

HITAP will collect or acquire various types of personal data from the following sources:

The Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP) would like to express sincere gratitude to the interviewees and resource persons from National Health Security Office (NHSO) and elsewhere for their major contribution in the production of this documentary mini-series. This documentary mini-series can never be made possible without support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the International Decision Support Initiative.