In its quest to ensure long term financial sustainability, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is to advocate for additional sources of funding for its operations.
To this end, the Scheme will intensify engagement with the government to increase the National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) from 2.5% to 3.5% whilst up-scaling the rolling-out the electronic claims across the country.
The Upper West Regional Director of NHIS, Abass Suleymana who announced this at the 2019 mid-year performance review meeting in Wa added that the Scheme will activate the enterprise risk management system as well as strengthen budget control measures to check expenditure.
The U/W Regional Director of NHIS, Abass Suleymana addressing the meeting
Mr. Suleymana pointed out that the move is in line with a six-pronged strategic direction of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA).
In this report, GBC’s Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo says the six-pronged approach include: Attaining universal health coverage; Improving efficiency and transparency in governance; Supporting the growth of private health insurance schemes; and sustaining public education on NHIS.
Mr. A bass Suleymana in an with the media at the event
Mr. Suleymana indicated that the Scheme in Upper West increased its active membership from 82% in 2018 to 89% for the period under review, whilst revenue also rose from 84% in the previous year to 97% in 2019.
He stated that the mobile renewal service launched last year by Vice President Bawumia has been accepted by the people with more than 50% of the premium and processing fees being paid through the service.
Mr. Suleymana also commented on the enhancement payment of claims, stating that: In recent times, there have been tremendous improvements as far as claims payments are concerned.
And we as an authority, are going to continue to do our utmost best to ensure that it will get to a point that all arrears will be cleared off.
Mr. Suleymana mentioned inadequate human resource as one of the challenges of the Scheme in some of its facilities, saying lack of the requisite human resource can affect the delivery of quality services.
