NHIS Beneficiaries Asked To Report Service Providers Charging Unapproved Fees
Mr Maxwell Mahama, the Sunyani Municipal Manager of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has called on members of the scheme to report accredited service providers who charged unapproved fees for providing medication.
He emphasised the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), managers of the scheme have signed contract with accredited public and private health facilities to provide quality healthcare services to clients free of charge.
Mr Mahama made the call when speaking at a community sensitization forum on the rights and responsibilities of NHIS members, held at Atronie, a farming community in the Sunyani Municipality.
He said beneficiaries owned the NHIS and their roles towards strengthening and sustaining the scheme remained paramount.
The beneficiaries of the scheme had earlier raised concerns that some service providers of the scheme in the Sunyani Municipality were charging beneficiaries of the scheme for some services.
They were also educated on how they could easily use their mobile phones to renew their membership at the comfort of their homes without walking to the NHIS offices for renewal.
Mr Mahama indicated though the scheme was confronted with certain challenges, it was registering more people in the municipality, disclosing that its active membership stood at more than 74,747 people.
The scheme has targeted to register at least 117, 244 people by the close of the year, he added, and advised those who had still not registered to do so, to access quality healthcare services.
Mr Kwadwo Addai, Nurse in-charge of the Atronie Health Centre noted that Out-Patient Department (OPD) cases had increased from less than 200 to over 10,000 since the facility was accredited by the scheme last year.
He said malaria remained the highest of all OPD cases, while cases of respiratory tract infections and diarrhoea were also high.
Most of the participants who spoke during the open forum appealed to the scheme to accredit some of over the counter drugs stores operating in rural for beneficiaries to easily access drugs.
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