Private health facilities to halt acceptance of private health insurance

The Private Health Facilities Association of Ghana has issued a strong caution, expressing its plan to discontinue the acceptance of Private Health Insurance in soon citinewsroom.com reports.

This is due to the failure of the National Health Insurance Authority to regulate Private Insurance Companies; adding that, this has resulted in late payment of arrears owed to its members.

The association reiterated that this situation has led to challenges in the payment of salaries and acquiring essential medical and non-medical consumables.

The General Secretary of the Association, Frank-Torbu, in an interview, mentioned that the grace period is long overdue, placing the responsibility squarely on the government to ensure prompt payments from private insurance companies.

“It wouldn’t be long; we will take them on. We won’t accept their cards when they visit our facilities, and I make it categorically clear that we don’t even need them to survive as a healthcare provider, but they need us to be in business,” he said.

Frank-Torbu further said, “So those companies that have been signing on to these private health insurance companies, thinking that they are safe, I can tell you for sure that you are not at all because when we trigger that we are no longer going to accept them in our facilities, premise on the fact from the insurance company they are bringing to our facilities, that is where they would begin to see the wrong on what the insurance companies are doing.”

“It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that whichever company they give credentials or accreditation or a license to operate as a private health insurance company in this country lives up to expectations, but that is not what the government is doing—I mean the National Health Insurance Authority,” he added.

RAD/OGB

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