The Central Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Mr Fred Appiah has applauded the staff of the Scheme for performing creditably amid the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Appiah made the commendation in an address he delivered at the 2021 half-year performance review conference at Winneba.
The conference was on the theme: “Towards Universal Health Coverage: Increasing Enrollment whilst Ensuring Sustainability”.
It afforded participants the opportunity to assess their performances, review their weaknesses, strengths and learn useful lessons to inform their strategies towards achieving their targets as well as to attain Universal Health Coverage (UHC) while securing long-term financial sustainability.
“Our continuous effort is to deepen stakeholder engagement to give a headway to enroll more members unto the Scheme to ensure its sustainability, achieve UHC and to have quality healthcare system for the citizenry”, he stated.
According to Mr Appiah, if the Scheme must continue to serve as a catalyst to meeting the UHC and remain sustainable, then it must continue to improve access to healthcare and lessen the financial burden of members in times of illness”.
He noted that the Scheme had over the years, built public confidence and that had contributed to the immense increase in membership.
Mr Appiah indicated that waned member confidence will affect the enrolment of new members to the Scheme, irrespective of the fantastic innovations such as the mobile renewal of membership among others, and urged the staff to do more.
“The objective of the Authority as stated in ACT 852 “is to attain universal health insurance coverage and to provide access to healthcare services to the persons covered by the Scheme
“It is incumbent on us to embark on aggressive public education and awareness creation to entice new members to come on board and also for clients whose card have expired to use the mobile renewal service with the shortcode *929# to renew their cards”.
The Regional Director stated that the Scheme was credited with improvements in the health-seeking behavior of many people in the country, and had also grown significantly in membership and utilization of health care services.
He announced that during the period under review, the region was able to collect an amount of GHc 5,109,092 out of GHc7, 816.005, representing 65 percent of its targeted revenue”.
Also, with the introduction of E-claims, claims processing had also improved and errors have drastically reduced, which has translated into positive claims reimbursement to facilities.
Service providers in the region have been paid up to December 2020 and some have even received payments for January and February 2021, he added.
Breast and cervical cancers have been introduced into the benefits package, and very soon childhood and prostate cancers shall be covered by the Scheme, he informed noted.
Ghana’s active membership of the scheme stands at 16.3 million and the Central Region has 1,193,200.
About 75% of the active membership was through Mobile renewal saying, the region renewed and registered a total of 32,112 people during the mid-year.
About 95% of staff in the region have taken the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, waiting for the second dose, he stated and urged them to continue to observe all the Covid-19 protocols.
