NHIA cash mobilisation grows in Greater Accra

The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) says the Greater Accra Region exceeded its premium collection target of Ghc6 million for 2015 after officials introduced innovative strategies to woo more beneficiaries.

The Region raked in about Ghc9 million which was more than the expected Ghc6 million mark the Authority set for itself during the year, Mr. Lawrence Amartey, the Regional Director of the NHIA, said.

Addressing officials of the Authority from 14 districts in the Region at the 2015 annual performance review meeting, Mr. Amartey said its membership mobilisation target of 1.3 million was also surpassed to 1.5 million.

The meeting brought together members to take stock of activities pursued during the year and to fashion out new targets and approaches towards better performance for improved healthcare service delivery to clients.

Mr. Amartey attributed the success to increased campaigns and ground-breaking actions initiated by staff and management to bridge the information gap between clients and officers.

“Greater Accra wants to be efficient, we want to ensure efficient financial management, transparency and good governance, we adopted innovative ways to register people,” he said.

“We intensified our monitoring efforts, we carried out campaigns at lorry parks and market places, and we visited homes just to reach out to as many people as we can,” he said.

Representatives of the 14 districts took turns to present their achievements, outlined several concerns undermining the smooth operation of the insurance scheme, and urged management to take urgent steps to reverse those challenges.

They said some of the difficulties include acute staff shortage, the absence of furniture, broken-down biometric registration machines and printers, absence of security personnel to man the offices, lack of cleaners and unavailability of transport.