The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has announced plans to do away with the co-payment system for healthcare services to curb malpractices and ensure greater transparency
The co-payment system, which requires patients to make a partial payment for certain medical treatments and procedures, has been a source of concern for the NHIS authorities. There have been widespread reports of healthcare providers exploiting the system, overcharging patients and engaging in other illegal practices.
The co-payment system has been prone to abuse, and we have decided to eliminate it altogether,” said Dr. Amina Suleiman, the Executive Secretary of the NHIS. “Our goal is to provide universal healthcare coverage to all citizens, and the co-payment system has been a barrier to achieving that objective.”
Under the new system, the NHIS will cover the full cost of all approved medical services, eliminating the need for patients to make any additional payments. This move is expected to improve access to healthcare, particularly for the economically disadvantaged segments of the population.
The public relations Officer (PRO) for the National Health Insurance Scheme in the Bono Region, Mr. Clement Obeng, says by removing the co-payment requirement, his outfit hopes to encourage more people to seek medical attention when needed, without worrying about the financial burden.
He noted that the CEO of the NHIS Mr. Aboagye Docosta and his entourage are working hard to initiate automatic adjustments of the prices of drugs covered by the health insurance to ensure an increase or decrease in exchange rate and inflation is automatically reflected on the prices, this he said will prevent the issues of Co-payments and other forms of extortions by the healthcare providers.
“We are trying to eradicate co-payment, our CEO Mr. Aboakye Dacosta is trying to get Parliamentary approval for an automatic system on our prices. This will help in the delay of payment to our health providers which is mainly as a result of the delay in reviewing our medicine list and by doing so, the issue of co-payment will be a thing of the past.”
“This system will ensure that our members get the best of health care, health care facilities will no longer complain about the price of medicines because health insurance will be paying those medicines no matter the price.” He said
The NHIS has also announced plans to strengthen its monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that healthcare providers comply with the new guidelines and refrain from any illegal practices. Strict penalties will be imposed on those found guilty of exploiting the system.
The implementation of the new policy is expected to commence in the coming months, as the NHIS works to finalize the necessary administrative and logistical arrangements.
Mr. Clement Obeng, urged the populace to desist from politicizing issues of the National Health Insurance Scheme stressing that the government is keen to ensure all complaints related to health insurance are resolved to serve the interest of the beneficiaries.
“We must not mingle politics with health insurance, once there is a political interverance in the scheme, there will be no problems. We paid all our health care providers and as we speak, we don’t owe any of them and we did that without any political influence so I don’t see the reason people will mingle politics with the scheme.” He told our reporter.
Source: Elvisanokyenews.com
