Microcare Ltd. Health Plan (Uganda) Notes from a visit 17-21 June 2002

This paper describes the evolution of ‘MicroCare’, a not-for-profit health management organization in Uganda that focuses entirely on the low-income market, from working primarily with microfinance institutions (MFIs) to working with other low-income groups in order to identify issues related to working with MFIs in partnerships.

The paper describes MicroCare’s:

• Products, institutional structure, and partnerships;
• Management and governance;
• Client levels of satisfaction with the product;
• Risk management and SWOT analysis.

The paper concludes by deriving lessons from the experience of MicroCare about:

• Operations:
  • A good computer system needs to be in place to prevent hospital patients from cheating the system,
  • A health care financing institution must develop and maintain reserves and relationships with a re-insurer to take care of risk.
• Marketing:
  • Marketers are the growth engine of a health insurance operation,
  • Unless there is effective supervision of a marketer’s activities, the institution is unlikely to realize meaningful growth,
  • Marketing needs to create awareness in people about insurance.
• Accounts:
  • A health insurance operation needs to have an efficient accounts department that can interpret information and make it useful to the management.
• Partners:
  • There is a need to have clear criteria for the selection of partners and agreements that adequately bind partners to their roles.