The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) will by the quarter of 2015 start issuing instant biometric identity cards to its subscribers in the Northern Region.
This is intended to prevent financial leakages and to improve the NHIA’s output in the region.
[contextly_sidebar id=”pYSAXLfnK2TUVbQrPcT6mktDaeQlcUGN”]The Northern Regional NHIA Director, Alhaji Hudu Iddrisu made this known in Tamale on the occasion of the authority’s end of year review (2014).
He said, “The project when successfully implemented stands to derive immense benefits like putting an end to impersonation and provider shopping, better authentication at provider sites, avoiding duplication of records of subscribers, increasing efficiency in the NHIS and a lot more.”
Achievements
Northern Region was adjudged the best in terms of the NHIA’s membership target and premium mobilization.
Elated Alhaji Hudu Iddrisu said his administration recorded over 9% of its membership target for the year 2014.
“During the year under review, we were able as a region to move our active membership from 967,212 at the beginning of the year representing 36.84% of the projected population of 1,138,642 at the end of December 2014 representing 40.96% of the projected population of the region.”
He said 258,214 of the registered membership represented the destitute whilst 102,576 school children were covered under the school’s enrolment exercise conducted between September and October 2014.
Alhaji Hudu Iddrisu however decried that the upward registration of active membership in the region did not commensurate the expected revenue rate.
“Out of our revenue target of GHC2, 923,409.32 for 2014, we were able to mobilize only GHC1, 633,379.51 representing 56%: this achievement incidentally happened to be the lowest nationwide.”
He attributed it to low premium rate, low income levels of people in the region and high rate of premium exempt groups.
Alhaji Hudu thus challenged all NHIA district Directors in the region to ensure greater operational and financial efficiency.
Going forward, he expected that at the end of the review meeting, new strategies will be drawn to achieve the NHIA’s revenue target for 2015.
“As we review our performance for 2014 and chart a new path for 2015, we must be mindful of the fact all our stakeholders expect nothing short of success from us: to achieve this success in the light of the new realities and challenges, we need to improve on our relationship and dealings with each other.”
Alhaji Hudu bragged that the NHIA payroll was devoid of ghost names but disclosed the authority’s resolve to engage external agents to review management’s approach towards headcount.
He reminded the entire district Directors of their responsibility to migrate onto the digital revolution to make it feasible the issuance of instant biometric ID cards.
NHIA CEO
In a speech read on his behalf, Chief Executive Officer of the NHIA, Sylvester Mensah commended the Northern Region for emerging as the best.
He however cautioned the district Directors against complacency and charged them to deepen customer loyalty by respecting subscribers.
Mr. Mensah tasked them to register more subscribers as means of providing financial risk protection which is the NHIA’s core objective.
He said a special registration exercise will begin in February and that the school enrolment exercise will continue unabated.
He revealed the NHIA’s intention to register beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme as well as vulnerable groups such as persons living with disability, inmates of psychiatric hospitals and Orphanages.
Mr. Mensah assured all NHIA staff of better remuneration and posited that hardworking staff will be compensated.
He emphasized that staff discipline was necessary and thereby called for early submission of claims for reimbursement to service providers.
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By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/Citifmonline.com