From: Iran’s health insurance ecosystem: challenges and strategies
Main theme | Subtheme | Challenges | Strategies |
---|---|---|---|
Collecting financial resources | Insurance premium | • Imbalance between cost and income of insurance organizations • Income arrears of insurance organizations regarding insurance premiums • Unstable financial resources • Challenges of collecting insurance premiums in a centralized and decentralized manner | • Creating a break-even point and balance between costs and expenses • Creating stable financial resources for the country’s insurance system • Realization of insurance premiums received |
Direct Payment | •Reduction of financial protection following the increase of direct payments | • Severing the financial relationship between the patient and the provider by using the function of supplementary insurances | |
Subsidy and tax | • Government debts to insurance organizations | • Tax on harmful goods as part of the health sector’s financial resources | |
Accumulation | Accumulation of financial resources | •The low share of accumulation by insurances in the health financing system | • Creating more accumulation and creating cross-subsidy by consolidating funds |
Purchase of service and allocation of financial resources | Service tariff and pricing | • Multi-tariff services • Unreality of service prices and tariffs in the insurance system | • Unification and actualization of the tariff and price of services through the modification of the tariff process |
Strategic purchase | •Defects in the correct execution of the strategic purchasing process | • Strengthening the role of insurance as a broker in the strategic purchase of services • Separation of the service buyer from the provider | |
payment system | • Late payment of insurances to medical institutions | • Reforming the payment system | |
Debts of the insurance organization | • Indebtedness of insurance organizations to contracting party institutions • Being the same buyer and service provider | • Management of costs to prevent waste of resources by the government • Development and implementation of clinical guidelines and treatment protocols | |
Package of services covered by insurance | • Injustice caused by the variation in the service packages of different insurance organizations | • Review and improve the basic service package in the same way for all insurance organizations | |
Stratification, referral system and family physician | • Failure to comply with the referral system by the insured | • Reforming the system of providing and purchasing services with the system of referral, stratification and family physician | |
Population covered by insurance | •Overlap of the coverage population due to the lack of a comprehensive and integrated information bank of the insured | •Creating an integrated database system of the population covered by all insurance funds | |
Insurance contracts | • Insurance deductions based on contracts | • Paying attention to and respecting the rights and interests of the parties in insurance contracts |