The Introducing of Community-Based Health Insurance (CBHI) in Lao PDR “A Systematic Review”

Abstract

Background: Community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes are usually voluntary and characterized by community members pooling funds to offset the cost of healthcare. In Lao PDR, to improve the health system, the government launched four health financing schemes targeting specific groups in the population, including SASS, SSO, HEF and CBHI. Among the four schemes, only the CBHI scheme is based on voluntary membership and is implemented in a decentralized manner. Therefore, I performed the systematic review in order depict a comprehensive picture on the current evidence-based researches of CBHI in Laos. In detail, this study summarized the topic that were investigated and corresponded finds. Method: I conducted a systematic search of literature according to 2 databases (PubMed and NCBI) to identify peer-reviewed studies published in English or Lao between 2011 to 2020. By addressed the community-based health insurance in Lao PDR. Base on the inclusion criteria, 11 articles were included in this systematic review. Results: Most of the studies were qualitative and quantitative researches with topics such as potential demand for voluntary community-based health insurance in Lao PDR, the impact of CBHI, factors affecting to willingness to join CBHI, as well as achieving universal health coverage through voluntary insurance. Conclusion: CBHI schemes cannot attract many people by their functional nature, but CBHI in Lao PDR is still at the development stage. Therefore, those evidence-based articles, findings suggested and strategy. Together with the initiation of new health reforms and as a complement to redesign the benefit package such that it fulfills the expectations of the targeted enrollment, more empirical researches should be conducted on issues relating to the practical operation of CBHI to ensure greater coverage of the CBHI scheme in the future.