Awareness and utilization of the Megha Health Insurance Scheme in secondary care Hospitals in East Khasi Hills District, Meghalaya, India

The Megha Health Insurance Scheme(MHIS) is an health insurance scheme, an initiative by the government of Meghalaya, aimed at providing universal health insurance. A hospital based cross sectional study was carried out to explore out the awareness and knowledge of the MHIS among those seeking health care services at four secondary care hospitals of East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, North Eastern India. A total number of 1250 respondents (female 64.6%; male 35.4%) were non-randomly selected through purposive sampling and were interviewed using a pretested semi structured questionnaire. Roughly 57.52% of the respondents had the knowledge about health insurance, 63.44% were aware of the health insurance and 76.4% came to know the Megha Health Insurance Scheme from the awareness campaigns. Subsequently 38.03% of the beneficiaries reported to have utilized the health insurance for more than 3 times.