By Vanessa Adjei
The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has refuted claims that it owes Service Providers since 2017.
Its Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Lydia Dsane-Selby, said such claims are untrue and should be disregarded. Speaking to Journalists in Accra, Dr. Dsane-Selby noted that the Authority has paid all claims as of September 2021.
“If you’re a private facility and you’re owed that far back then they should write to me telling me where they submitted their claims to. Do they have a claims report to show their claims have been processed?”
She, however, said a few arrears for September, and October 2021 are also ready to be disbursed. She said Parliament has approved a GHC1.4 Billion budget allocated to it. Dr. Dsane-Selby added that out of the amount, the NHIA has released GHC100 million cedis to be paid to Service Providers.
“We made some payments recently of a 100 million or so. Our bill is around GHC 90 to 95 million cedis a month. At the moment claims coming in are probably for the month of December 2021, but we are in April so there is already quite a gap as to what is coming in. We have paid August 2021, and our planning to pay September and October,” she noted.
The media briefing by the NHIA was to clarify issues regarding arrears owed service providers and what had been done so far to clear outstandings.Dr. Dsane-Selby explained that the NHIA continues to make frantic efforts to pay service providers stressing that this has been the trend for the years till October 2021.
“So as you can imagine if people say we owe 50 million and a 100 million or whatever, we never finish paying, today some hospitals will bring a bill so the claims will go up. I’ve signed responses to those who want to bring July 2021 claims, we have paid everybody and they are going to bring in by the time we finish processing they will say we owe them 11 months.”
Dr. Dsane-Selby questioned the motive of some of the service providers who alleged that the Authority owed them some monies. She challenged those service providers to produce evidence to back their claims.
“If someone is owed as far as 2017, they have major problems and they should have contacted us by now, if you’re owed that much how are you operating. If anyone has that problem they should write to me and I will investigate and reimburse them.”
Meanwhile, the Authority has reviewed its pricing for medicines and services under the Scheme and is awaiting approval from the Ministry of Finance for the new pricing list to take effect.