Cleaning The Data Mess!

It’s a piece of welcome that now the National Health Insurance has announced that it is linking the Scheme’s Card to the National Identification Authority’s database to allow Ghana-Card holders to access affordable healthcare services.

Additionally, Ghana-Card holders could use their cards to access health services at all National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) accredited service providers across the country.

The move we are told forms part of Government’s policy direction to make the Ghana-Card a standard card for accessing public services.

The gesture is also meant to speed up the country’s quest to attaining Universal Health Coverage ahead of the 2030 target.

This came to light when Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia launched the NHIS Week in Accra, on the theme: “NHIS – Leaving No One Behind”.

For us at THE NEW PUBLISHER, in as much as we applaud the gesture, we think the Ghana Card and the other forms of identification must be well synched in order to maximize its use.

We hold that the integration of the NHIS and the National Identification cards marks a new dawn in the national health system, which dovetails into the government’s digitisation agenda to formalise the economy.

The paper is optimistic that the amalgamation would see a surge in the Scheme registering more than the estimated 23.1 million people nationwide currently on the scheme.

In other words our conviction is that the innovative services being provided would greatly improve the active people on the Scheme and even capture more.

The integration system should also see an improvement in primary healthcare and capture every citizen onto the Scheme for optimal services.

The NEW PUBLISHER views this ‘marriage of cards” as the first step in helping to sanitize our national database system.

We believe that the country has over the years spent so much money collecting the same information over and again, a reason that appear to be moving in circles in that regards.