Komfo Anokye Vomits GH¢2m NHIA Money

A whopping GH¢2,111,678.07 is to be deducted from the bills of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, submitted during the tenure of Dr. Nsiah Asare as Chief Executive Officer.

This damning happenings in the nation’s second largest teaching hospital, was discovered following an investigation conducted by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA).

The directive, contained in excerpts of a report cited by The Herald, was to take cumulative effect from January to December 2009 until the amount is cleared.

Interestingly, Komfo Anokye Hospital is the same facility where attempt by the NHIA to start a pilot capitation programme was fiercely resisted by health service providers in that region, in June this year.

Coincidentally, Dr. Nsiah Asare, was instrumental in kicking against the programme which was a payment system under which accredited healthcare providers were to receive advance payment at a pre-determined fixed rate, to provide patients with defined health package.

Twenty-seven districts in the Ashanti Region were selected by the Authority to pilot the capitation programme, which was expected to take-off in July, this year but was suspended indefinitely due to the resistance.

The investigations which were conducted in June, 2010 revealed how the premium hospital serving the northern sector of the country wrongfully applied tariffs, in which 10% of the in-patient bills were found to be detentions. In another aspect of the finding, 10% of folders examined had problems with insertion, substitutions and inflation of medicines. Shockingly, managers denied any knowledge of the issues.

Again, non-referral physiotherapies which are supposed to form part of the all-inclusive tariffs have surprisingly been billed, however when asked, the physiotherapists of the hospital explained that they were not aware physiotherapy requested in the facility formed part of the all-inclusive tariffs.

Inadequate record keeping was also detected as one of the ways in which the scheme lost huge sums of money in the Komfo Anokye Hospital as some 5. 47% of folders examined had this problem.

For example, medicines supplied from the Hospital’s Pharmacy were not crossed out to indicate the ones that had been supplied making it difficult to determine which medicines were supplied and which ones were sent to private pharmacy shops.

Records on prescriptions sent to all private pharmacy shops were also not available at the Hospital Pharmacy where these prescriptions were written whilst some of the folders did not have full details of the medicines prescribed.

Some doctors at the hospital were also discovered to have given six months to one year prescription to chronic disease patients.

When these anomalies were detected by the team and questions were raised, Management flatly denied them insisting that they were not aware of any of the findings that were going on.

These actions according to NHIS management increases cost of services which has the potential to render the scheme bankrupt, and thereby threatening the sustainability of the scheme.

The findings were so disappointing that immediate recommendations were suggested to remedy the various leakages in that hospital.

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the NHIA, Sylvester Mensah, and his predecessor, Ras Boateng were engaged in near fisticuffs in the studios of Joy FM, following arguments about the true state of the NHIS.

Ras Boateng, who had managed the Authority in the erstwhile NPP administration just like the NPP’s flag bearer, Nana

Akufo-Addo posited that the NHIS was in dire straits and could collapse any time soon.

But NHIA CEO discredited all the claims made by his predecessor accusing him of being paid to deliberately dishonor the tremendous achievements being made by the NHIA under the NDC regime.

Mr Mensah fingered his predecessor in some adverse audit findings conducted on the scheme during his tenure.

But Ras Boateng was quick to rebut that allegation, accusing the NHIA boss of being a “liar”.

Speaking on “Joy FM’s” news programmeCrossfire, the former NHIA Chief Executive provided some documents to back the claims he, together with his party, have been making against the Sylvester Mensah-led NHIA.

Ras Boateng quoted a portion of the 2011 financial report of the NHIA which says the National Health Insurance Fund risks deepening further if additional source of funding is not raised to back the fund.

The former NHIA boss stated that the authority was living on borrowed time and the system’s collapse was imminent if prudent measures were not put in place to arrest the situation.

The two prior to their meeting on Crossfire had been engaged in a media war, throwing accusations at each other. Wednesday’s meeting between the two provided them a face to face opportunity to thrash out their differences.

The two, occasionally raised their voices at each other during the live show and it seems Wednesday’s meeting did not solve the differences between the two as they both stood by their earlier convictions.

Ras Boateng claimed that the authority was living on borrowed time and the system’s collapse was imminent if prudent measures were not put in place to arrest the situation.