National Health Insurance Fund

Technical and Ethical Research Committee

Research Priorities 2017

Universal Health Coverage Theme:

1. Does NHIF improve the accessibility to quality health care?

• What are interventions needed to improve accessibility of insurers to their entitlements?

• What are the gaps in the perceived and standard quality of health care services?

• What is the equity impact of NHIF? And how it can be improved?

• What are the necessary interventions required to improve health care utilization across states?

2. Evaluation of under-5 coverage in North Kurdufan State

• Does all under-5 are covered effectively by suitable health care services?

• What are the bottlenecks of under-5 coverage in NK and how it can be improved?

3. How can NHIF expand its coverage among the informal sectors with minimal possible cost?

• How can additional resources for health sector can be mobilized?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of different mechanisms of mobilizing resources for health?

• How it cost NHIF to achieve UHC?

4. What are the effective measures to promote rational use of medical services and medicines?

• What are the sources of irrational medical practices? and how it can be resolved?

• How can NHIF control the supply induced demand for unnecessary medical services provided?

5. What are the factors affecting the implementation of NHIF-ML and how it can be modified positively?

• What are factors affecting NHIF-ML including policies, Regulations, Systems, Providers, Distributors and behavioral?

• How can NHIF deal with each factor to improve the implementation?

6. What is the appropriate allocation of resources towards primary and secondary

7. To what extent do health services currently reach the poorest?

Costing and Economic Evaluation Theme:

1. Cost effectiveness analysis of group purchasing of pharmaceuticals

• What are the strength and weaknesses of purchasing pharmaceuticals through National Medical Supply Fund? and how it can be improved?

• What is the efficiency impact in term of management process and leakage control?

2. What is the burden of chronic diseases on NHIF sustainability?

• What is cost of hypertension and diabetes

• Are there is any interventions to reduce the burden of the 2 diseases? And how it can be implemented?  

Providers Theme:

1. Do NHIF implemented the Standard Treatment Guidelines Effectively?

• Do the medical practice improved by the implementation of STGs by NHIF in 6 states? and Why?

Beneficiaries Theme:

1. Do additional co-insurance in Khartoum states has an effect in term of Equity, Catastrophic expenditure, quality etc.?

• What can be done to ensure that co-insurance does not prevent the poor families from accessing health care services?

• What is the impact of co-insurance on equity, quality, catastrophic expenditure? And how it can be modified

2. Why do patients are referred within and outside states?

• How do patients affect referral decisions? And how it can be reduced?

• What is the role of providers in referring patients? And how it can be changed?

• Is there are any factors related to the available health system? And the possibility of improvement processes