Stakeholders of NHIA urged to stick to agreement

Mr Christopher Oddoye, Manager of the Awutu Effutu Senya District Office of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has appealed to stakeholders to constantly revise the Memorandum of Understanding between them and the Authority to stick to the tenets of the agreement.

He said stakeholders needed to stop co-payment and illegal charges, which were contrary to the MOU.

Mr Oddoye disclosed this in a presentation he delivered at a-day’s stakeholder’s engagement at Winneba.

The meeting was on the theme: “Accelerating membership Growth to Active and Sustain Universal Health Coverage using Technological Medium; the experience so far under the Awutu Effutu Senya Coverage Area.”

It was also to give an account of their stewardship during the period, identify challenges and strategize for the way forward.

He said the Awutu Effutu Senya District Office of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), in 2022 made some significant gains in active membership, Indigents/LEAP, School Feeding, Mobile Renewal and Special Registrations.

According to Mr Oddoye operations of the district office covered two local government administrative areas; (Effutu Municipal with a population of 107,798 and Awutu Senya District which also has 161,460), totalling 269, 258.

He indicated that the active membership; New and Renewal, Mobile Renewal, Indigent/LEAP registration, School Feeding and Special Registration were the five indicators that drove membership growth of the District Offices.

He said Awutu Effutu-Senya district office continued to be among the two cash cow zones in Central Region, regarding the five indicators, exceeding its set targets.
He stated that active membership began decreasing in 2016 and 2017 until the introduction of Mobile Renewal application in 2018, which saw a huge rise.

“Besides our achievements, we have challenges and the notable among them are delays in claims reimbursement, top/co-payment practices by facilities and untimely initiation of credential renewal process,” he indicated.

Mr Oddoye noted that compared to previous systems, the Biometric Membership Solution (BMS) erased the challenge of uncollected cards of about 50,000 and detailed profiling that allowed for additional services, eliminated double registration to preserve resources and made it easy, timely and convenient to search for a member’s details.

He said the district office would intensify its sensitization programmes in the various communities, encourage more people to join the scheme, and monitor the activities of stakeholders.

“We will extend the duration of daily community registration points of new people as well as to continue with the implementation of the already existing strategies to help increase population coverage in the pursuit of accelerating membership growth to help achieve the UHC before or by 2030”, he added.

Source: newsghana.com.gh