The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has stated that the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) membership card usage for healthcare is still encouraging across the country.
This was in a report on the NHIS’ resilience and activities in the past few years, released by management of the NHIA and made available to the Ghana News Agency.
It noted that a random sampling conducted between June 26 and 30, 2023, to ascertain the use of the NHIS card in some regions of Ghana, revealed that on the average, over 80 per cent of attendees to most public healthcare centres attended with their membership cards, with at least three different drugs dispensed to them on each visit.
The sampling result showed among others, that out of 1124 out-patients attending Suntreso Hospital in the Ashanti region, 873 attended with NHIS card, and Manhyia Hospital saw 1784 out of the 2125 OPD attendants using NHIS only.
The result also revealed that the SDA Hospital and Sunyani Hospital, all located in the Bono Region, saw respectively, 206 NHIS holders out of 264 patients and 255 NHIS registrants out of 285 OPD attendees.
The report stated that at the LEKMA Hospital in Teshie in the Greater Accra Region, 319 OPD attendees accessed healthcare at the facility with NHIS cards out of the 466 patients seen within the period of the sampling.
“This cannot be said of a Scheme that is failing and accused of only dispensing paracetamol despite the rise in claim payments”.
According to management, as of the end of 2022, the scheme had an active membership of 17.2 million, representing approximately 55 percent of the population, which they said was the highest since the inception of the Scheme.
It added that the NHIA has credentialed over 4,500 health facilities across the country, comprising Public, Private, quasi-public, and Faith-based facilities with a variety of levels such as CHPS Compounds, Health centres, Pharmacies, Diagnostic centres, Primary Hospitals, secondary hospitals, and tertiary hospitals.
The report also stated that over the past 20 years, the NHIA, in a bid to make the scheme more efficient and sustainable, had undertaken reforms, including the introduction of the instant issuance of biometric membership cards for the renewal of membership as well as self-enrolment using USSD (*929#) and applications (MyNHISApp) on mobile phones.
Since 2022, the NHIA had introduced robust innovations geared towards enhancing productivity, improving efficiency, and increasing visibility and brand recognition, among others. Some of the homegrown innovations.