Project News

The workshop on fee schedule took place with two Japanese experts on 29 June 2021 online. Around 30 participants from the National Health Security Office (NHSO) Region 13 Bangkok Office, the Bangkok Fee Schedule Committee, academia, and so on joined to learn from Japan's experience on reimbursement condition setting.

Since the 1st phase, the GLO+UHC project has cooperated with NHSO Bangkok region as a model in applying Japan's payment system based on the fee schedule to the Thai context. The collaboration has been producing excellent outcomes. NHSO Bangkok Office established the Fee Schedule Committee in 2019 modeled on Japan's Central Social Insurance Medical Council called "Chuikyo". This time, NHSO Bangkok presented that they had successfully introduced fixed fee schedule to more than 4,500 items (94% of all the fee-for-service items) of out-patient services and reduced healthcare cost.

In contrast to the capitation system, fee-for-service system brings supplier-induced demand. In this context, a new important challenge of NHSO is how to set up reimbursement conditions on fee schedule. The lecture focused this point and showed a basic and very important concept of setting reimbursement conditions that help cost containment and maintaining the quality of medical care. Thai participants also learned a lot of examples of reimbursement conditions and lessons learned in Japan and had a lively questions-and-answers. The workshop finished after discussing the next challenges that the Thai counterparts want to address by learning from Japan.

In accordance with the discussion, the project will continuously cooperate with NHSO to improve and expand the fee schedule system nationwide.