Jakarta – Health security agency BPJS Kesehatan continues to promote preventive promotional measures through health screening.
In 2023, there will be 39.7 million JKN or the national health security scheme participants who have utilized health screening services to determine their potential disease risk. The utilization rate for health screening has jumped 17.7 times compared to 2021. At that time, health screening had only been used by 2.24 million JKN participants, according to BPJS Kesehatan president director Ghufron Mukti at the 2024 ASEAN Priority Setting Exercise in Singapore.
"Promotion, prevention, screening, and consultation services are being strengthened, so that not only sick JKN participants can take advantage of JKN services but also those who are healthy can take advantage of them. Health history screening is the first step in detecting disease risk. We group JKN participants at low, medium, and high risk through health history screening which participants access via the JKN Mobile Application or the BPJS Kesehatan website," Ghufron said.
"If the risk is high, we will direct them to a health facility to be examined and treated immediately," he added.
JKN participants today can undertake health screening for diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cervical cancer, and breast cancer. BPJS Kesehatan has plans to expand it to 14 types of screening services, which will include thalassemia, anemia, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and lung cancer, among others.
"Diseases with huge costs still rank at the top of the JKN Program health service financing, almost 25 percent of the JKN service burden at Advanced Level Referral Health Facilities [FKRTL]. In 2023, BPJS Health spent Rp 34.7 trillion to pay for health services for 29.7 million cases of catastrophic illnesses. It's like two sides of a coin for us. On the one hand, more and more people are being helped because they can access health services. However, on the other hand, the burden of health service costs continues to increase. This is a big task for all of us to be able to control the number of people suffering from diseases with catastrophic costs. That's why early detection is super important," Ghufron said.
Ghufron was recently selected as the new Co-Convener of the Steering Group Joint Learning Network (JLN) for Universal Health Coverage.
JLN brings together practitioners and policymakers from various countries whose aim is to share experiences, and knowledge to develop systems and resources aimed at achieving universal health coverage.
The JLN community encompasses leaders from ministries of national health financing institutions and other government institutions in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Source: https://jakartaglobe.id/special-updates/bpjs-kesehatan-promotes-early-health-screenin