By: KALD | Voltaonlinegh.com |
The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) in the Volta region has set to increase the subscriber base of the Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to about 1.1 million in 2019 from the 2018 figure of about 818,000.
The target is almost half of the 2,607,996 projected population of the region, including Oti.
This was made known last week by Mr. Joseph Homenya, Regional Director of NHIA at the 2018 Annual Review Meeting of the authority in Ho.
He told scheme managers from all 16 NHIS operational districts that, though the target seems to be on a higher side, he was very confident of it being achieved with the deployment of the needed logistics.
Mr. Homenya indicated that, in spite of the limited staff numbers, the authority in the past year saw through the implementation of ‘some policy game changers such as; mobile renewal system, e-receipt system, and non-biometric authentication system, among other innovations.
He added that, claims payment to providers, which was hitherto a key challenge for the authority, has been worked on, and a backlog of arrears owed most service providers  has been paid up to June 2018.
To ensure efficient financial management, the Regional NHIA, according to the Director, also introduced account verification exercise where all districts accountants bring their financial reports to the regional accounts department for thorough scrutiny to ensure things were being done right.
He however bemoaned the low enrollment of indigents onto the scheme, with only 31,000 out of the 159,000 target realized in the year under review and thus, entreated the schemes to re-strategize and do much more in that regard.
A thorough assessment of the performance of the 16 NHIS operational districts saw Kadjebi being ranked the best performing district for the 2018 with Akatsi and South Tongu placing second and third respectively; while Jasikan, Nkwanta and Krachi West districts placed the bottom three spots accordingly.
Meanwhile, some scheme managers attributed the poor performance of their districts to logistical and human resource constraints which hindered their effective operation in the past year; but assured of measures to improve their performance this year.
Source: www.voltaonlinegh.com
