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About GH�120 million is said to have been paid as claims by the Ashanti Regional Directorate of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to health providers in the region during the year 2012. The Scheme, however, managed to raise only GH�6.5 million as premium from its beneficiaries, representing about GH�113.5 million shortfalls in the internal fund generation of the authority. The whopping sum of almost GH�113.5 million was, therefore, raised by the government towards the payment of claims to service providers under the scheme during the year under review. The acting Ashanti Regional Director of the NHIA, Mr. Bawa Nurudeen, who revealed this during an interview on Kapital 97.1FM in Kumasi, noted that the situation amply epitomised the kind of difficulty the government, and for that matter the NHIA, was going through on a daily basis, trying to satisfy its numerous clients, as part of efforts at ensuring quality healthcare delivery to Ghanaians. Mr. Bawa observed that the fact that the scheme was not able to raise even a quarter of the claims paid to clients health providers, and had to consistently rely on the government for the chunk of the funding was a great disincentive to the smooth running of the programme. According to him, the occasional delay in the payment of claims, and the usual agitations by service providers, was not deliberate on the part of the authority, stressing that the huge budget expenditure of the government often makes it difficult assessing funds on a timely basis for payment. The acting Regional NHIA Director, however, pointed out that the delays were also due to the fact that service providers do not present claims on time for processing and subsequent payment, whilst banks are also partially to blame for the failure to expedite release of funds to service providers after payment had been made by the authority. He noted that under normal circumstances, direct transfers to banks should not take too long, least two days, but sometimes the system could delay up to five days and weeks, a situation which the authority finds difficult to understand. Even though Mr. Bawa said he did not suspect any foul play on the part of the banks involved, he believed that the process could be fast-tracked expeditiously for the benefit of the parties involved. His statement was in connection with reports that some banks, in connivance with the Mutual Heal Insurance Schemes, deliberately delay the release of the funds for other fringe financial benefits. But the acting Director said such a situation could not occur because of the system of payment and the monitoring involved. Enumerating some of the measures being introduced to facilitate the operations of the scheme, Mr. Bawa said a claim centre for the region was expected to be set up by mid-September to oversee the speedy processing of claims and subsequent payment. He also hinted that biometric registration would soon be introduced to weed out all abnormalities associated with the issuance of cards and accessibility. Mr. Bawa pointed out that when introduced, the biometric registration would help clean the data, reduce the time taking for issuing cards and authentication, and further facilitate the renewal of cards after expiration. �We also believe that biometric registration will reduce the risk of hospitals attending to people with expired cards, and the time taken to process claims,� he stressed.