Abstract

Employees’ State Insurance scheme is an evolutionary security scheme in India that covers huge working population. It provides social protection to workers in the organized sector and their dependents in contingencies, such as, sickness, maternity, disablement and death due to an employment injury or occupational disease. This Study Focus on the awareness and utilisation of ESI scheme by the employees. Objective: To study the utilization of Employees State Insurance scheme benefits in a Tertiary care hospital in Central Karnataka. Methodology: All Employees Registered under ESI Scheme of the tertiary care hospital i.e. 398 were included in the study. Out of which 19 were unwilling or unavailable to participate in the study. Thus about 379 covered under ESI Insurance in Basaveshwara hospital were included in the study. The data on socio demographic variables and information on awareness and utilization of ESI services was taken. Data were entered into Microsoft excel sheet and analyzed using SPSS 17.0 software. Frequency and percentages were calculated. Results: In this study, only 3.9% of the participants utilized health services in ESI hospital. The most common reason (56%) for non-utilization of ESI services was that the OPD timings were unsuitable. Around 32.2% had absolutely no knowledge about ESI services and 59.2% of the participants were dissatisfied due to deficit of medicines in the facility. Around 95% of the study subjects were happy of getting the lab services and any surgical procedures free of cost. Conclusions: Most of the working employees have low awareness about the existing ESI scheme. Hence both the organization and government should focus on creating the awareness among the employees and the benefits of utilization of ESI policy.

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