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Facilitators of and barriers to the use of healthcare services from a user and provider perspective in Ejisu-Juaben municipality, Ghana

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Abstract

Objective

Knowledge about the use of formal healthcare services is an important aspect of public health policy. However, there is a paucity of empirical studies on facilitators of and barriers to formal healthcare use in Ghana from the health user and provider points of view, a gap this qualitative study aims to fill.

Methods

In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 healthcare users and 15 formal healthcare providers in Ejisu-Juaben Municipality in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. A thematic analytical framework was used to analyse the data, which were then presented based on an a posteriori inductive reduction approach.

Results

Four major facilitators of healthcare use were identified: acceptance of the health insurance card, having a good relationship with the healthcare providers, quality of the service offered/professionalism and proximity to healthcare facilities. The barriers to formal healthcare use established in this study were of an economic, social, cultural and institutional nature.

Conclusion

The study findings highlight the need to address barriers to the utilisation of formal healthcare by reviewing the national health insurance scheme, recruiting language interpreters at health facilities and integrating the formal and traditional systems into the mainstream national health system in Ghana. This move would help make headway toward meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages by 2030.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Williams Agyemang-Duah

  2. Department of Geography and Rural Development, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Charlotte Monica Mensah, Prince Peprah & Emmanuel Mawuli Abalo

  3. Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Francis Arthur

Authors
  1. Williams Agyemang-Duah
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  2. Charlotte Monica Mensah
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  3. Prince Peprah
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  4. Francis Arthur
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  5. Emmanuel Mawuli Abalo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Williams Agyemang-Duah.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Agyemang-Duah, W., Mensah, C.M., Peprah, P. et al. Facilitators of and barriers to the use of healthcare services from a user and provider perspective in Ejisu-Juaben municipality, Ghana. J Public Health (Berl.) 27, 133–142 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-018-0946-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-018-0946-0

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