Appraisal of health maintenance organisations’ performance in the Nigerian healthcare service sector

Abstract

The quality of healthcare service delivery under the existing health maintenance organisations (HMOs) in Nigeria has been a major concern to enrollees who have contested the value received from their respective HMO accredited hospitals under the program. This paper appraised health maintenance organisations’ performance in the Nigerian healthcare service sector capturing enrollees’ experience on the issues of access, responsiveness, and quality of healthcare service choice to measure the success or failure of the program since inception. The study adopted survey design with three hundred forty enrollees of ten leading HMOs in Nigeria that operate in different parts of Lagos Metropolis. Data collected were analysed with relevant descriptive and inferential statistics while hypotheses tested were at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that HMO accredited hospitals have not ensured adequate access of enrollees to healthcare services, their responsiveness to enrollees’ healthcare requests have not been impressive, and quality of healthcare services to enrollees have also not been excellent. Based on the findings, the study recommends that HMOs and government should improve on monitoring the quality of healthcare service delivery at their accredited hospitals and concluded that the performance of the HMOs in the area of healthcare service delivery is not world class when it comes to access, responsiveness, and quality of service delivery.