Christian Owusu-Kontor
The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) says it is stepping out to ensure mass acceptability and patronage of the Mobile Application (MyNHIS APP) to ensure easy access to Scheme.
The MyNHIS APP can be downloaded on Play Store; and it offers clients the comfort to access the authority’s services as self-registration and renewal, registration, and renewal for the third party as well as linking the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the Ghana Card without going through the challenges of traveling to any NHIA office.
Mr. Christian Owusu-Kontor, Acting Director for NHIA, Oti Region, explained how the App works in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tema.
He said the authority was taking advantage of technology infrastructure to fast-track its objective of making health services accessible to all irrespective of one’s geographical location, or financial status.
“Membership cards of those who choose to renew via mobile will not be embossed with the expiry dates whereas the mobile Renewal Service will also be available on all networks for all subscribers except pregnant women and Indigents who will be required to go through the manual process for authentication purpose,” he said.
He said in 2018 the NHIS launched the short code *929# for the renewal of membership cards as well as linking the Ghana Card to the NHIS Card.
The Oti NHIA Acting Regional Director explained that the Mobile Application was free to download, convenient to use, and one did not need to pay anyone to access the service.
He said, “MyNHIS APP” also seeks to help improve the cooperate image of the Authority, provide more value to the members, connect with members, and improve member loyalty and feedback.
He indicated that currently, children under 15 years would not be able to register for the NHIS membership using the MyNHIS APP because they did not have the Ghana Card, but said they were exploring ways to bridge that gap.
Mr. Owusu-Kontor added the digitization of NHIA’s operations would lead to convenience in service delivery and access, reduced cost of operation, and job efficiency and effectiveness.
Subscribers would also be required to validate their hospital attendance on their mobile phones as part of a mechanism to check duplicate payment of claims and fraud, he said.
He, therefore, appealed to the public to embrace the new APP for easy registration
He said that one could also dial *929#. to check if their card is active or inactive.
He said that people who have obtained age 15 will pay GHC15.00; and 18 years and above will pay GHC28.00 for renewal, however, those 70 years and above, pregnant women, and children below the age of 15 will not pay any amount of money when renewing their NHIS card.
