Health insurance calls for media support

Alhaji Abudu Samson, the Eastern Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), has called on the media to support the Scheme to thrive since it was a very good social intervention critical to the healthcare needs of the people.

He said the intervention that aimed at healthcare accessibility and affordability must be supported without any political undertones to ensure that the objective of the NHIS was realised to the fullest.

Alhaji Sampson told journalists at Koforidua that despite challenges in its implementation, the NHIS still remained one of the surest ways to provide quality and affordable access to healthcare.

He said the media had the tool to support the NHIS by educating the public on their rights as well as responsibilities that go with NHIS membership, adding that with such education, awareness would be created to encourage more clients to join.

The Regional Director mentioned claims payment to accredited service providers, system abuse, membership renewal and the ongoing biometric registration as some of the issues the media could educate the public on.

He said the focus on the on-going biometric registration was to improve data integrity to ensure that only registered clients access the benefits, adding that people abused the old system by accessing healthcare with others’ cards when they were not registered.

He said just with every human institution, there were bound to be flaws and since the NHIS was not an exception, management periodically adjusted operational trends to improve upon their services.