Ghana Card/NHIS integration to boost Universal Health Coverage (UHC) - NHIA CEO

Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) says the policy intervention to allow Ghanaians use Ghana cards to access healthcare under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is the surest means of attaining Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030.

In the estimation of Dr. Lydia Dsane-Selby, the NHIA had preempted that there would be a Ghana card usage and thereby created space on its current Biometric Membership Solution for its integration.

She maintained that the Ghana card integration will enable the Authority identify the exact locations of NHIS members, their prevailing health circumstances and provide appropriate interventions.

Using the Ghana card will keep track of all NHIS members and would prevent financial leakages thereby allowing the taxpayers’ money to be used judiciously for better healthcare services, she emphasized.

She added that, “We all have to remember that a bulk of the NHIS income is from NHI Levy, Premiums and SSNIT contributions and it needs to be used wisely. We need to rope Ghanaians into understanding how the money is used and its effect and the best way to do that is with data. So that we can show the evidence of what the money is used for.”

She re-echoed the enormous benefits of digitization saying, “As we get more digitized, more Ghanaians fall into the tax brackets and therefore the levy for us will go up and then we have more money to provide healthcare for citizens.”

“We are scaling up our electronic claims. We now have a feedback electronic system so that when a provider says he has seen our members, we actually send an SMS to the patients to know whether they have been there or not. It makes the organization more accountable.”

According to her, the planned systematic implementation of this project is the surest means of attaining Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030.
The NHIA Chief Executive said the amount of money invested in printing NHIS cards and also managing the Authority’s biometric database will be used for other purposes.

Through digitization, the NHIA is helping the government prevent fraud and ensure that healthcare funding is spent wisely on patient care, health promotion and prevention.