Assessment of the knowledge of healthcare workers at Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital, Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa regarding the South African National Health Insurance Scheme : understanding the National Health Insurance Scheme

South Africa currently has a dual healthcare system in which the government pays for the healthcare of the under-privileged whereas the middle class and wealthy pay for medical care at private clinics and hospitals from their own pockets. This has resulted in the failure to "guarantee good quality healthcare for all. In 2012 the minister of health announced that South Africa will launch its own National Health Insurance (NHI) with the aim of offering universal healthcare coverage. This study sought to explore healthcare workers' knowledge regarding the proposed NHI. A quantitative, descriptive study was conducted in which self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. A total of 180 healthcare workers (males=42, females=38) were conveniently and randomly selected. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse data and responses to categorical variables were summarised as frequency counts and percentages. More than half 54.45% of the healthcare workers did not know that membership to NHI would be compulsory, while 63.33% believed that NHI will not provide adequate cover compared to current medical schemes. Regarding the main objectives of NIH, 54.58% of the healthcare workers were knowledgeable whereas 44.26% were unaware of the proposed socio-economic benefits of NHI. Overall, 55% of the healthcare workers supported the implementation of NHI. The study revealed that healthcare workers had inadequate knowledge about the proposed NHI, but overwhelmingly supported its introduction.