Pharmaceutical Society demands payments of arrears from NHIA

The Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH) has called on the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to honour its promise to pay all arrears it owes service providers to save the scheme from collapse.

It said the NHIA indebtedness to the providers for 2014 stood at GH¢456.4 million which the authority promised to pay by the close of March 2015, but to date, the arrears had not been settled.

At a press briefing on delayed reimbursement of health service providers in Accra last Tuesday, the President of PSGH, Mr James Ohemeng Kyei, called on the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NHIA, Mr Sylvester Mensah, to redeem his promise.

He said the service providers had suffered for too long and that the situation was having a negative impact on the pharmaceutical sector.

Mr Ohemeng Kyei also called on the government to expedite action on the bailout to bring relief to the service providers and save the scheme from collapse.

He said the pharmaceutical sector was probably the hardest hit by the undue delay in claims payment to providers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

He said the sector included local pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmaceutical importers and distributers, hospital pharmacies and community pharmacies.

Pharmaceutical companies

 Mr Kyei said most of the pharmaceutical companies were faced with cash flow challenges and were unable to meet their financial obligations to their suppliers and this had resulted in the termination of import and distribution agreements.

 He indicated that those developments had led to the shortage of many essential medicines in the country since the supply of those medicines were done by the private sector.

He also claimed that the delay in payments had led to the near collapse and in some cases the complete collapse of some businesses in the pharmaceutical sector.

“The PSGH is unhappy about the situation where the NHIA does not find money to pay providers whose claims had been outstanding for about eight to 10 months but finds money to fund some non-core and non-urgent activities,” he said.

Complaint

Mr Kyei said priority must be given to the payment of claims arrears because that was the purpose for the taxpayers’ contribution to the NHIL.

He recommended that claims payments ought to be considered the topmost priority of the NHIA, which must enjoy the same ranking as the payment of monthly salaries of NHIA staff.

Mr Kyei made a strong case that until arrears owed providers covering 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 were paid in full, the NHIA should stop funding non-urgent and non-core activities and projects.