Address NHIS Indebtedness crisis urgently-CHAG appeals

The Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), has appealed to the government and stakeholders to attach a sense of urgency to tackle the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) indebtedness crisis to health facilities and sustain quality healthcare delivery.

The Association called on Civil Society Organisations, and the media to join the campaign to salvage the NHIS and the healthcare system from an eminent collapse.

It would be recall that the indebtedness of NHIS which is in arrears of 12 months was crippling the delivery of quality and efficient healthcare to the poor and vulnerable groups in the country.

Even though the Government recently released 80 million and 76.6 million respectively in February and May as part of a monthly reimbursement plan, the Executive Director for CHAG, Mr. Peter K. Yeboah, noted that the piecemeal token payment for a month of the debt has rather aggravated the condition of CHAG member institutions.

“This has resulted in the incessant harassment from creditors, who throng CHAG facilities a day after the payment was made to demand the debt owed them”, he stated.

Besides, “the current payment mechanism is uncoordinated, irregular, and erratic”, he observed, adding that so far, less than 50 % of the CHAG member facilities have been reimbursed.

He stated that “the current road map of reimbursement which does adequately resource health facilities to safe, quality and essential lifesaving medicines is inconceivable.”

The Director therefore called for a significant and substantial reimbursement to CHAG facilities, covering a period of at least five months to enable the facilities particularly those in the remote areas to continue providing affordable and quality healthcare to the poor, deprived and vulnerable groups in our society.

Given the essential role of NHIS as one of the best social intervention schemes, Mr. Yeboah stated that CHAG has the moral and civic responsibility to collaborate with government to sustain the scheme.  

The Executive Director therefore proposed continuous dialogue between stakeholders to address the challenges of the NHIS, and expressed the hope that as part of the process of reorganising the scheme to make it more responsive, the perspectives of all stakeholders including the clients would be factored in.   

In the face of the challenges, Mr. Peter Yeboah, pledged the commitment of CHAG member facilities to partner government to make quality healthcare available, affordable and more accessible to the good people of Ghana.

Consistent to CHAG’s core values of service and sacrifice, the Executive Director assured the public of the health facilities continuous commitment to provide service to all people irrespective of their socio-economic status and most importantly within the challenges and constraints imposed by the NHIS chronic indebtedness to CHAG member institutions.

*Mr Peter K. Yeboah, Executive Director of CHAG