Empaneled public and private health facilities will provide outpatient health services under the new outpatient scheme. In order to understand the readiness of these health facilities to provide these services, the qualitative working group of INSPIRE Pakistan interviewed medical officers in 12 public and 6 private health facilities in Mardan district, which will be empaneled under the scheme.
Continue readingContent
Official Launch of the OPD Outpatient Scheme: Soft Launch Event in Peshawar
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government formally launched free Outpatient Department (OPD) services under the Sehat Card Plus program on February 19, 2025, which marks an important milestone for our research consortium.
Continue readingPopulation Panel: Final Survey Wave Before Scheme Start Successfully Completed
The latest wave of data collection for the population panel represents a significant achievement in understanding the needs and characteristics of beneficiaries under the OPD scheme. An unexpected change in the eligibility criteria for the planned outpatient scheme required our research consortium to update our sample in line with these new criteria. The KMU, FAU and H-BRS teams made this milestone possible through the efficient coordination and mobilization of resources, even without initially budgeting for this major effort.
Continue readingNew evidence on changes in outpatient-care utilisation and out-of-pocket expenditures in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)
The most recent wave of the household panel survey which is organised by the population panel working group of our research consortium provides interesting new insights on rising healthcare costs and how they impacted health care utilization in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan.
Continue readingProf. Landmann invited to Stanford to talk about SHPI
The Asia Health Policy Program at Stanford invited Professor Andreas Landmann (Principal Investigator of our research team) to give a talk on “Information Barriers to Social Health Protection in Pakistan” at Stanford University. A teaser can be found here. The talk took place on April, 20th 2023 and was streamed as a webinar.
Continue readingProvider panel: First wave of data collection
Analyzing what the health service readiness gaps in the pool of potentially eligible health facilities and providers for the outpatient scheme are and how the introduction of insurance coverage for outpatient services affects health service delivery is a fundamental aspect of the research project on the SHPI Phase II and the main research activity of the provider panel working group. In specific, the provider panel group assesses the quality of service delivery and its changes following the introduction of the insurance scheme and monitors provider management capacity, health workers behavior, and patients experience and satisfaction.
Continue readingLong-term follow-up: Preparation of the data collection
As part of the research project on the SHPI, the long-term follow-up working group examines the development of out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures for inpatient care services (IPD) under SHPI Phase I since 2017. We are happy to see that Vendula Stepanikova, a member of the FAU team based in Germany, had the opportunity to travel to Peshawar between the 4th and the 14th of September and to make significant progress on the research design of the working group.
Continue readingDissemination of the needs assessment for the OPD insurance scheme
During their recent stay in Pakistan, the research consortium invited all key stakeholders of the SHPI Phase 2 project to a dissemination workshop that was held in Peshawar on June 1st. This was a great opportunity for the research team members to present the first major deliverable of their research: the needs assessment for the OPD insurance scheme.
Continue readingSecond visit of the German SHPI research team members to Pakistan
After their first visit to Pakistan in November 2021, seven research team members from Friedrich-Alexander-University (FAU) and the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH) returned to Pakistan between May 17th and June 10th, 2022. Their goal was to meet the research consortium members of Khyber Medical University (KMU) as well as the key stakeholders of SHPI Phase 2, and hold a dissemination workshop to present the findings of the first wave of data collection. The trip allowed the research team to make relevant progress on the research.
Continue readingPopulation panel: Phone survey on children & adolescents health completed
Following the first wave of in-person data collection which finished in March, the population panel group successfully implemented a quick follow-up phone survey on health care of children and adolescents. The data collection took place between April 15th and April 29th via phone with the professional support of I.C.U. Healthcare and represents the first phone survey conducted by the research consortium for the SHPI Phase 2.
Continue reading