Hospitals in the Volta Region are threatening to return to the cash and carry system if the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) does not pay monies owed them within 30 days.
[contextly_sidebar id=”nR3MRNOaaV8bhOu7e238H9vNxkacAV18″]The Hospitals say they owe the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) over GH¢30,000 and the Ghana Water Company over GH¢10,000 and demand that the NHIA pays the debt to enable them to defray such cost.
A number of health facilities have complained over the delay in repayment for services under the NHIS.
Addressing a news conference on Friday, the Volta Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Joseph Teye Nuertey said the NHIA owes the various hospitals over seven months arrears; a situation that is affecting their operations.
“In business term, you do not expect to owe an entity for over six months and the entity continue to provide credit facility to your clients.”
“We just want to sound a note of caution to the managers of NHIA that we have kept our part of the agreement for far too long…on the other hand have blatantly violated their part of the agreement not to owe us for more than three months. Facilities are owing suppliers and are suffocating. All the oxygen cylinders in the hospitals are drying empty and it will not be long when the resilience and the little lives left in our facilities get exhausted,” he added.
The Ghana Chamber of Pharmacy in 2014 nearly cut supply of drugs to health facilities that depend on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to pay for their drugs.
This they say is because such health facilities delay in paying for drugs supplied them.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana