NHIA Debts: Cash & Carry Will Return Soon – HISPAG Warns

The National Communications and Operations Director of the Health Insurance Service Providers Association of Ghana, (HISPAG), Joseph Christian Amoah has warned that some Health facilities that accept the National Health Insurance Card are likely to return to the cash and carry system soon.

According to him, the health facilities are lamenting government’s failure to settle their claims in arrears between 10 and 20 months.

Some of the health providers say they have had to device strategies to flee from creditors and suppliers who constantly breathe down their necks to pay up their debts.

Mr. Amoah adds that President Akufo-Addo’s claim that the NHIS is gaining the confidence it lost under the past administration has worsened their relationship with debtors.

Delivering the second State of the Nation address last week, the president noted that hospitals no longer collect extra monies from patients as used to be the case in the previous administration.

But Mr. Amoah in an interview with Starr News said the association is angered by the president’s utterances.

Mr. Amoah admonished that payments of claims must not be politicised because it can collapse the healthcare delivery system in the country.

“If care is not taken healthcare is going to collapse very soon…since 2015 that tariffs were reviewed including drugs till date drugs are not being reviewed, tariffs are not being reviewed and all these things are problems to the provider.

“After the provider renders services, the provider too is not paid, you are putting pressure on the provider and if care is not taken cash and carry will come back very soon…this is a real cancer…so they shouldn’t politicise payments of claims and other things,” Mr. Amoah said.

Source: Starrfmonline