UHC Video Presented at Prince Mahidol Award Conference 2012
at 26-28 January 2012, Centara Grand Hotel, THAILAND

Prince Mahidol of Songkla is the father of His Majesty the King of Thailand. The Thai people recognize Prince Mahidol as "The Father of Modern Medicine and Public Health of Thailand" due to HRH's great contribution to the progress of modern medicine and public health in Thailand.  The Prince Mahidol Award Foundation was established in 1992 to commemorate the Centenary Anniversary of HRH's Birthday. The Prince Mahidol Award is conferred annually by His Majesty the King of Thailand to individual(s) or institution(s) for outstanding performance and/or research that has a global impact in the field of medicine and public health.

Connecting and managing all health insurance schemes through ICT system

         Although Thailand is not a country with good ICT infrastructures and has less people with high computer literacy, however, in this field visit participants will learn how the three main healthcare financing agencies, the Social Security Office (SSO), the National Health Security Office (NHSO) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF), manage and coordinate among schemes using ICT system. How individual records of all Thai citizens including smart cards, created and updated by the Bureau of Registration Administration, Ministry of Interior, are used for identification of beneficiaries of each health insurance scheme. Participants can also learn how three agencies, with different provider methods, manage data transaction of health service utilization to generate information for resource allocation. In addition to visiting the SSO, participants will also have an opportunity to visit a district health facility at Bangyai Hospital to learn how local health personnel manage their ICT system to comply with the central requirements.

Integrated healthcare system: a pre-requisite for universal coverage system

Thailand has a long experience in developing healthcare system based on primary care which is a pre-requisite for universal coverage system. Model development has been done in Ayutthaya Province, the ancient capital city of Thailand, since 1990 using action research approach. Continuous efforts for more than two decades has created many success stories on primary care development, both in urban and rural areas, with a close link to the referral hospital to form an integrated healthcare system. From this field visit, participants can learn how integrated healthcare system has been developed and its evolution after the implementation of the Universal Coverage Scheme.

Universal Health Coverage for Decentralization And Humanistic Care

Saraburi is a province in the central region where a regional office of the National Health Security Office (NHSO) is located as well as the Provincial Social Security Office. Participants can learn how the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS) is implemented and how the regional office, with a small number of staff, responds to local health problems and people's demands. Participants will visit some health facilities at Lam Sonthi District to see how they interact with these two decentralised offices and create initiatives to respond to local demand.

Universal Health Coverage for Hight-Cost , Complex Diseases

Mal-distribution of health resources remains a problem of the Thai healthcare system and this affects access to care of beneficiaries under the Universal Coverage Scheme especially for specialized health services. This field visit will start with a visit to a cardiac centre, namely Central Chest Institute of Thailand, nearby Bangkok, to learn how the National Health Security Office (NHSO) manages the referral system to shorten the queue of patients waiting for cardiac surgery and therefore improves access to specialized care of UC beneficiaries.

Public - Private Partnership in Universal Health Coverage

Most private healthcare providers in Thailand are concentrated in the urban areas where big hospitals are located with few primary care providers. The National Health Security Office (NHSO) tries to promote private clinics to participate in the UC Scheme as Contracted Unit for Primary Care (CUP) to provide comprehensive health services to UC beneficiaries in urban settings. These comprehensive health services include common curative services, preventive and health promotion (P&P) services, and rehabilitative services both in clinic and community. This is quite a challenging assignment since normally private clinics will focus only on curative services. However, the NHSO can get some success stories of these private clinics which participants can learn from these experiences. This field visit will bring participants to expose to a network of private clinics of Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital (Royal Thai Air Force public hospital).

Engaging community organizations in the management of Universal Coverage Scheme

The National Health Security Office (NHSO) has supported many local initiatives especially those initiated by the local authority, community organization and patient group. The sub-district community health fund has been established with co-funding by the NHSO and local authority. The community fund will provide financial support for health promotion activities and, by this approach, more resources can be mobilized to support local health system development. The NHSO also supports civic groups to establish a community compliant handling centre to help people facing the problem of access to quality care. This centre can also be an effective communication mechanism to inform people about their rights and facilitates process needed to access care. Participants can visit and learn from some of these case studies in Samut Songkram Province.