The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has reimbursed GHc800 million to health facilities it owes since January 2017 when the NPP government took over.
According to the Director of Health Services, Dr. Nsiah Asare, the average disbursement per month is about GHC 81 million.
[contextly_sidebar id=”myzxjlSGyTHNBtmArxnzYIzOq2CftRDO”]Speaking at the 15th Annual General Meeting of Medical Superintendents Group 0f Ghana at Koforidua, Dr. Nsiah Asare assured that “systems are in place to ensure frequent reimbursement of claims” and urged hospitals to treat such transactions with seriousness.
“We want to monitor every single claim form sent to the Health Insurance Authority so a special office has been created at the ministry to see to it because we realized that 10 percent of claims from health facilities are rejected by the scheme and we do not want that to continue.”
“We want to ensure zero tolerance on claims rejection and I advise all hospitals who have assigned claims handling duties to national service personnel to desist from doing so,” he added.
Favouring local pharmaceutical companies
Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, the guest speaker at the program, suggested that the National Health Insurance Authority gives priority to generic drugs to reduce the burden on the National Health Insurance Scheme.
He is of the view that local pharmaceutical companies can be assigned to produce equally quality good drugs to lessen the influx of branded drugs on the Ghanaian market.
“The good Lord planted medicines in our backyards and yet we do not use it, I keep saying we may have the cure to HIV here but nobody is searching for it. In the National Health service in the UK, all the prescriptions are generic drugs, but here we rely heavily on branded drugs, we are putting pressure on our Health Insurance with these branded drugs instead of generic drugs. We can manufacture these branded drugs here by assigning them to produce the drugs here and they must be endorsed for usage by our Health Insurance, we should not go chasing new drugs but let’s create our own here.”
He then urged the Medical Superintendents to be creative, research and use herbal medicines in discharging their duties.
“It is high time medical superintendents become more creative, we should endeavour to do more research in other fields of studies,” he said.
–
By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana