The Association said it cannot provide information on when its members are to resume work due to the technical nature of their planned installation assessment.

[contextly_sidebar id=”GmBOBQk6s6d3rnqyJJlu3WUGV7YU8SAX”]Members of the Association have suspended work supposedly for major maintenance works on their stations nationwide.

The Association’s members, some of who shutdown from Wednesday, October 19, has not indicated when it will allow members resume regular operations.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, the spokesperson for the LPG Marketing Companies Association of Ghana, Kwame Owiredu, said, “We put up a technical team and we gave them the mandate to check the integrity of our installations as well as issues associated with delivery so we are hoping that they come out with their result as to what they found. It is a technical issue so we didn’t place timelines, and we are hoping that the technical people will do their jobs as soon as possible so that we get past this whole thing.”

The situation is expected to take a serious toll on consumers who would have to wait for the companies to resume before they can refill their cylinders.

Restaurants, bakeries and other businesses that rely on gas are also likely to be negatively affected by the development.

Some have accused the LPG Marketers of undertaking the move against the government due to the latter’s plans to reintroduce the gas re-circulation program, and also close down high-risk fuel stations.

But Mr.Owiredu told Richard Sky on Eyewitness News that, “we are not undertaking this exercise to fight the government or our way of resenting to whatever directive might have come from the government. We believe that public safety is supreme and important, and as much as we know that those who patronize our gas will face some difficulty in accessing gas, their safety is also very important.”

He noted that, although some gas stations are yet to implement the decision, the Association is optimistic that by noon on Thursday, the companies would have fully complied.

Cylinder re-circulation program

The government’s decision to introduce the cylinder re-circulation program, comes after a gas explosion at Atomic junction in Accra, that killed at least 7 people and injured over 130 others.

Following the incident, President Akufo-Addo as part of a 9-point cabinet decision directed stakeholders to implement the cylinder re-circulation program within a year.

As part of the program, consumers will buy cylinder bottles already filled with gas and will not need to refill themselves at designated stations.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Our suspension of operation indefinite – LPG Marketers appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

CHAG instructed all of its 183 member institutions to withhold its services from NHIS card holders since the Authority was indebted to CHAG to the tune of 50 million cedis.

The decision greatly affected patients in the rural hospitals who depended on these mission hospitals for health care delivery.

A joint press statement issued by CHAG and NHIA however, indicated that “based on the above understandings, CHAG has agreed that services to NHIS cardholders be restored by CHAG member institutions throughout the country with immediate effect”

Both parties further indicated that they had resolved to facilitate the payment of delayed claims for March, 2014 saying “the NHIA will thereafter work with CHAG to define a claims payment time lag that ensures certainty of payments taking into account current constraints and bearing in mind the legally mandated reimbursement period of 90 days”

Click here to read statement by CHAG and NHIA

By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah

The post Mission hospitals to restore services to NHIS cardholders appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The Mission  hospitals on Tuesday began turning away the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) subscribers.

The decision is as a result of the inability of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to pay CHAG health facilities’ outstanding bills for services rendered .

Reporting from the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital at Kwadaso in the Ashanti region, Citi FM’s Hawa Iddrisu reported that a 57 year old patient who visited the hospital was asked to go home since she could not afford her hospital bills.

Another lady stated that “I came here with my Health Insurance card but they are asking me to pay 30 cedis for just Malaria treatment because they are not accepting the NHIS cards again”

Hawa Iddrisu said the Hospital was virtually empty with just a handful of people around since the directive was given

Citi FMs Eastern regional correspondent, Kwame Appiah Kubi reports that pressure is mounting on government hospitals a day after mission hospitals decided to turn NHIS subscribers away.

According to him most patients are now turning to the few government hospitals within the region.

“The situation is creating congestion at the hospital’s Out Patient Department (OPD),” Appiah Kubi observed.

He reported that “a visit to the Koforidua Central and the Oda government hospital among others leaves no doubt that enormous pressure will be exerted on the hospital’s limited staff and resources during this period.”

He stated that residents are therefore calling on the NHIA to immediately engage in a dialogue with the service providers to address the problem.

By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Mission hospitals directive hurting NHIS patients appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The Executive Director of CHAG on the Citi Breakfast Show explained that health centers under the association are unable to provide quality health care to NHIS subscribers due to the failure of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to reimburse them early for services rendered.

He said: “We are not able to give them the medicines we prescribe, patients come to us under emergency situations and we have to send relatives out of the hospitals to buy medicines and other inputs…and the key issue is the National Health Insurance.”

These challenges according to him, “does not sit well with us as a Christian organization.”

Dr. Buckle disclosed that the NHIA is in arrears of six months and the cost of the services provided is “much higher that what the insurance is reimbursing us for.”

In relation to the ongoing NHIS Capitation in the Ashanti Region, Dr. Buckle stated that “all the clinics are collapsing just because the capitation tariffs are too low and the community is bypassing the primary health.”

He claimed that the NHIS capitation is collapsing primary healthcare delivery in the Ashanti Region.

The CHAG Executive Director also pointed out that the NHIS Levy “is not being fully applied to the services of the National Health Insurance Authority,” an information he says has been relayed to them by the NHIA and the Finance Ministry “that government has other statutory expenses it has to incur and therefore National Health Insurance levy is being used to do that.”

Dr. Buckle clarified that before they signed onto the NHIS, health services in their hospitals and respective clinics “were of the highest quality and we could finance our cost of services.”

He described their decision to withdraw their services to NHIS card bearers as “very difficult” following a series of meetings and deliberations.

The CHAG is made up of 59 hospitals and 111 clinics across the country.

In response however, the Communications Manager of the NHIA, Selorm Adonoo stated that the Authority has been in talks with CHAG and their concerns will be addressed before the July 2 deadline given.

He admitted that due to the central system of operations of the NHIA, funds for service providers under the scheme are sometimes delayed.

According to him, the NHIA now has a lot of claims to process due to the increasing number of health facilities and NHIS subscribers saying, “last year, we had about 27.7 million claim forms we had to deal with and that is a lot of work…so as we grow, a lot of these things keep coming.”

Mr. Adonoo added that the implementation of the revised medicines list and tariffs will be implemented by close of June, 2014.

He was however, unable to give a definite time in which the payment of the arrears will be settled because “we [NHIA] are not doing this alone and we depend on other government agencies for this.”

By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan

The post Hospitals collapsing due to NHIS indebtedness – CHAG appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.