ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME (NHIS) ON EMPLOYEES’ PERFORMANCE IN THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT, ABUJA

The challenge of maintaining good health in the workplace has become critical as organizations have learned that health conditions significantly affect the performance of their employees. With the establishment of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to improve on the quality and access to health care services, and reduce the financial burden of out-of-pocket spending, this paper is aimed at assessing the impact of the NHIS on employees’ performance in Nigeria. NHIS is a fringe benefit aimed at increasing the economic security of enrollees’ and in doing so, improve worker retention across the organization. The study is a qualitative research and data were collected through primary and secondary sources. The secondary data were generated through the review of relevant literatures on the subject matter, while the primary data were collected through a semi structured interview based on the research questions and objectives. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Abuja is the area of study. It has a staff population of 1709 as at 2015. Through a purposive sampling technique 4 staff, each from the promotions unit in the Department of Human resources and those in the Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA), a total of 8 enrollees of the NHIS were interviewed. Transcribing was done manually and Nvivo 10 was used for coding and analysis. The findings indicate that 75% of the respondents in this study are affected by the out-of-pocket spending on healthcare despite their enrolment in NHIS. Although there is satisfaction in doing their work, it is not a function of their enrollment in the scheme. The survey also discovered that politics is a challenge to the successful implementation of the NHIS, as it manifests in diverse form - corruption, interrelationship conflict between the NHIS, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and Health Care Providers (HCPs), funding and unavailability of drugs. The paper recommends that user fees and charges on NHIS enrollees in both public and private health facilities should be discouraged and a strict adherence to the guidelines in the relationship between NHIS, HMOs and HCPs be upheld to tackle conflict and corruption in the scheme.