Development Strategy for the Local Health Security Fund in National Health Security Office Region 10, UbonRatchathani,Thailand

Abstract

Local health security funds or Community Health Fund are an innovation introduced to achieve greater local government involvement in Thailand’s Universal Health Coverage and is an outcome of decentralizing power to local administrations and serves as a health fund for people in local communities. The fund’s budget is subsidized by the National Health Security Office which the contributes to a fund with a condition that the local government provides matching funding, but it also found that most funds run by fund administrative committee of Local Administrative Organizations had significant weakness such as their lacked strategies for deploying funds, had taken few steps to promote cooperation among local health care providers and lacked systematic mechanisms for assessing available resources and health informatic system. This study aimed to develop a strategy for agreeing and implementing the Local Health Security Fund in a northeastern Thai provinces. It applied mixed research methodology to investigate fund strategies and development models. The quantitative study component involved a questionnaire completed by 720 members serving on funds administrative committees from 270 fund. The results of study identified six strategies employed by existing funds : 1) Strengthening and developing the capacity of fund committee. 2) Developing the capacity of the fund mentoring team, 3) Developing the information system 4) Promote and support the process of strengthening collaboration mechanisms between health organizations, 5) Promote and develop fund potential and 6) Developing strategies for health promotion and disease prevention. And the model of LHSF developmental strategy is consistent with the empirical data (CMIN / df = 1.867 ,p = .000 , GFI = .937 ,AGFI = .907 , CFI = .968 , NFI = .935 , RMSEA = .037
Therefore, the study provides significant finding on best element from existing strategies can be brought together to formulate an improved strategy for local health security fund development. Also, The funds should be promote health and prevent disease as their core objectives, explore how funding can be maximized and used to achieve maximum health gain, and develop a role as center for learning about community health.