NHIS arrears to be paid within next four weeks — Dr Bampoe

Rebecca Quaicoe Duho Jan - 10 - 2015 , 03:14

The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Asare Bampoe, has assured National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) providers that they will receive part of their arrears within the next four weeks.

The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has not been able to pay a number of scheme providers for the past 11 months. As of May 2014, the government owed health service providers GH¢213.2 million.

The deputy minister disclosed this when he met with district directors of health from the Western Region in Takoradi during a two-week working visit to the area.

He was accompanied by members of the Ebola Emergency Operations Team who were in the region to assess its preparedness to contain the Ebola viral disease.

According to him, there was a fiscal squeeze in funds, a situation which he said affected claims payment of the NHIS.

However, he said the government had prioritised payments and would soon make monies available to providers.

He said although the money that would be released would not cover all the arrears owed providers, it would still serve as a relief to them.

Need for reforms

The deputy minister was of the view that the way the NHIS was being managed presently was not sustainable and called for reforms and the scaling up of the capitation programme.

He expressed concern about how expenditure of the scheme kept ballooning, saying that not all of the expenditure presented for payments by the NHIS were real.

Co-payment

The district health directors in their submissions called on the government to also look at the issue of co-payment as a means of sustaining the scheme.

They also called for improvement in infrastructure facilties in their various districts.

The Western Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Emmanuel Tinkorang, said the delay in the payment of claims was among some of the challenges confronting health facilities in the region.

He said the situation had left most of the health facilities cash strapped as they owed the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and other providers large sums of money.