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The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) on Tuesday sensitized Ghana Health Service (GHS) service providers in the Greater Accra region on a new initiative to improve the client experience. The initiative dubbed “Making Experiences count for our clients” is meant to enhance satisfaction of NHIS clients at the healthcare provider end.

The initiative, a brainchild of the acting Chief Executive, Nathaniel Otoo, will see the deployment of NHIS personnel at provider sites to help NHIS card holders navigate the complexities associated with receiving care at the healthcare facility.

The initiative is currently being pre-tested at the Ridge and Police Hospitals in Accra, and an incremental roll-out is expected by end of the year.

Speaking at the sensitization program with the GHS healthcare providers in Accra, Mr Otoo said the deployment of the NHIS personnel to the health facilities is necessary to improve the Scheme’s engagement with its clients and also support the deployment of biometric authentication kits at provider ends.

The acting Chief Executive recently announced that the NHIA intends to save about 5 million Ghana cedis annually from discontinuing the use of paper alone in its registration process. He explained at Tuesday’s program that the freed staff who hitherto filled out the registration forms will be deployed to the provider sites to lead this venture.

The savings, he mentioned would be applied to other areas of need in the operations of the Scheme.

The Greater Accra regional director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Linda Van Otoo, underscored the importance of the program and pledged the support of the regional health directorate to ensure that the NHIS succeeds.

Chairman of the “Making Experiences count for our clients” team, Dr Nicholas Tweneboah described the role of the NHIS personnel at the provider site as broadly acting as liaison between the subscribers and providers on the one hand and NHIS on the other, to provide feedback on members and providers’ complaints and escalate these complaints to the relevant authority.

According to him, the personnel will also Investigate reports of irregular events and report to relevant authority and make recommendations to the NHIA on issues related to quality of care. They also have a task to “document and report instances of illegitimate payment from the subscribers,” Dr Tweneboah said.

He said with the full roll-out of the NHIS’ biometric membership system across the country, the NHIA is beginning a deployment of authentication kits to health facilities to complete the process, and these personnel will be crucial to the success of this, as well.

The NHIA in 2014 started a biometric system as an efficiency gain measure to address issues of ID card management, clean NHIA’s membership database by preventing duplicate records and implement an effective verification system at the point of healthcare service deliver. It will also, according to the NHIA, help link membership provider attendance verification to claims management.