The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has asked the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) to exercise restraint and suspend their planned withdrawal of services next month.
According to the Communications Manager of the NHIA, Mr Selorm Adonoo, the economic situation in the country has made it difficult for the Authority to refund the claims made by health care providers.
He told Accra-based Citi FM that, �We�ve had a review of medicines about a month ago�because the economic situations keep changing and cost of drugs keep going up. What we have done is that we have reviewed the list and what is left is the implementation of it.�
The Christian Health Association on Thursday announced that effective July 2, 2014; all 183 member institutions shall cease to recognize the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card as a means of payment for service rendered to clients.
According to the association, the decision has been taken due to the National Health Insurance Authority�s (NHIA) consistent delay in the payment of claims to service providers which has put member institutions into huge indebtedness of an average of five to six months claims.
However, according to the Mr Adonoo, the NHIA has been in talks with CHAG and their concerns would be addressed before the July 2 deadline.
According to him, the NHIA now has a lot of claims to process due to the increasing number of health facilities and NHIS subscribers saying, �last year, we had about 27.7 million claim forms we had to deal with and that is a lot of work�so as we grow, a lot of these things keep coming.�
Mr. Adonoo added that the implementation of the revised medicines list and tariffs will be implemented by close of June, 2014.
He was however, unable to give a definite time in which the payment of the arrears will be settled because �we [HNIA] are not doing this alone and we depend on other government agencies for this.�
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