CHAG makes distress call to Government

The Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) has sent a distress call to Government to address with dispatch the huge indebtedness of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to its health facilities.

CHAG is a faith-based health network organisation comprising 21 Christian Church denominations and over 183-member health institutions spread throughout the country. Established in 1967, with 25 health institution, the Association which provides about 40 per cent of health care in the country, has most of its facilities located in remote areas, and most of its clients being NHIS subscribers.

According to Mr. Peter Yeboah, Executive Director of CHAG, the Scheme owes its facilities over GH¢ 100 million for services rendered to NHIS Members/Clients, spanning over eleven months.

In an interview, he noted with concern that CHAG was overwhelmed by the level of indebtedness, a situation he described as an “eminent humanitarian disaster of massive proportion” if the indebtedness of the Scheme was not addressed in time.

“We have gone beyond our endurance limit,” Mr Yeboah observed, stressing that “the situation is so critical that basic healthcare services to mothers, children, aged, poor, needy and the marginalised are affected.

The Executive Secretary bemoaned the situation where suppliers of medicines and other medical consumables were chasing and pestering the facilities and even threatening legal suits to redeem the amounts owed by facilities.

Elaborating further, he noted that “our suppliers are unwilling to supply us with essential consumables and medicines, our medical equipment are breaking down due to inadequate funds for repairs/maintenance, medical services has become unbearable, with life-saving infrastructures deteriorating”.

Due to this development, he observed that physicians were compelled to issue patients with prescriptions for them to go and buy the medicines from the market.

He said this was seriously affecting the quality of healthcare delivery in the country, adding that it has gotten to the stage where “we are unable to guarantee quality of medicines the patients are buying and taking.”

On Government’s campaign promise to fix the challenges bedeviling the NHIS, the Executive Secretary stated that CHAG appreciates Government’s intention, but expressed worry about the fact that there was no road map of repayment plan and settling the debts owed the health facilities three months after the new administration took reins of governance.

He noted that CHAG was more worried about the collateral damage the indebtedness was having on the health care system in the country, as well as the dire consequences it has on the economy, if the situation persists.

As a result of these months of indebtedness to service providers, Mr Yeboah observed that there was a “gradual loss of confidence in the health system, as patients, NHIS members/clients are losing hope in health care delivery.”

He said what was needed now was an urgent action by Government to salvage the health system from an eminent collapse by settling the debts owed by the NHIS to service providers.  

Mr. Yeboah called for an end to the chronic NHIS indebtedness, urging Government to make exigent intervention to restore the health system.