The Christian Health Association Ghana (CHAG) will begin rejecting\u00a0patients\u00a0using National Health Insurance Cards from their hospitals and clinics from\u00a0today, July 2.<\/p>\n
The Association says it has instructed all of its 183 member institutions to stop attending to NHIS card holders.<\/p>\n
CHAG says the National Health Insurance scheme is indebted to it to the tune 50 million cedis.<\/p>\n
The mission hospitals\u00a0serve 42 percent of the country\u2019s population with majority of its activities based in rural area.<\/p>\n
Speaking in an interview with Citi News<\/b>, the Director of the Association Executive, Dr. Gilbert Buckle says several efforts to get the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to pay them have been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatients come into the hospital and we don\u2019t have anything to give to them in terms of medication and other types of input for care. That is one of the problems and this does not fit well with us as a Christian organization we have also studied the environment and realized that the key issue has been with the National Health Insurance where government has gotten into a social contract with the people of Ghana and says I will pay for your healthcare through national insurance; which is fine.\u201d He said.<\/p>\n
He went on to explain the dire situation saying, \u201cthe challenge now has become one: we are in arrears of 5 to 6 months payment which means we do not have the financial capacity to purchase the input we need to provide the services to those of you who come to us. Two: the cost of services we provide is much higher than what the insurance is reimbursing us for. For instance, if we buy paracetamol for 1ghc on the market and the insurance says we\u2019ll reimburse you 50p and that is the only source of payment for the services, we are already 50p short and are unable to manage other costs we are incurring.\u201d<\/p>\n
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By: Ewurabena Hagan\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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