NHIA declares operation 4 million new active membership campaign

As plans are afoot to celebrate the National Health Insurance Scheme’s (NHIS) Week under the theme, “NHIS: Leaving no one behind” the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) targets 4 million more, active members, in the month of November 2020.

In this regard, the Scheme’s Regional and District management teams are to step up their efforts in registering staff of corporate institutions, community residents, religious bodies, children under the School Feeding Program, beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Eradication Program (LEAP) and Prison inmates among others.

At a strategic meeting with all 16 Regional Management teams of the NHIA in Kumasi, the Deputy Chief Executive in charge of Operations, Mrs Vivian Addo-Cobbiah commended the Regional Directors and charged them to do more by increasing active membership to 15 million by end of November 2020.

“Get the numbers by all means so the majority of Ghanaians can access healthcare. In the end, NHIS active membership should rise to 15 million. We need to bring the majority of Ghanaians on board in order to achieve Universal Health Coverage and so let’s get innovative ideas to improve our overall performance,” she said.

She reminded staff on outreach programs to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 safety protocols for their own welfare and that of the general public.

Mrs. Addo-Cobbiah spoke about a wide range of NHIS issues including mobile renewals, online credentialing, claims payments, adding Herceptin to the NHIS medicine list, piloting of family planning programs, and clustering of healthcare facilities in major cities.

She said the inclusion of a specialist anti-breast cancer drug to the NHIS medicine list, online application for credentialing, and the piloting of a family planning program were some novelties introduced by the Authority lately.

She bemoaned the clustering of private healthcare service providers in the major cities and advocated re-location of such facilities to the under-served areas to make the Scheme accessible to all residents in Ghana in line with the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) agenda 2030.

She also said the Authority would welcome applications from private healthcare providers willing to establish facilities in remote areas where their services are desired.

She further emphasized the impact of the most innovative Mobile Renewal Service and urged the general public to continue using the system for their membership renewals.

According to the DCE Operations, the Authority has since January 2020 made claims payments to 85% of providers up to April 2020 and urged all credentialed service providers to constantly submit their claims on time.

The NHIA’s Director in charge of Membership and Regional Operations (MRO), Mr Ben Kusi, and the Director, Administration, Dr Francis Xavier Andoh-Adjei were there to support her.