Re-imbursement delays affecting quality health care - Director

Dr Kofi Issah, Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has observed that delay by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to re-reimburse claims to health facilities has an effect on the quality of health care delivery in the country.

The Regional Director who made the observation during the 2015 Annual Performance Review organised by the Directorate at the weekend, said failure of the Authority to timely re-reimburse health facilities result in health care providers inability to settle the bills they owe to suppliers of drugs and non-drug consumables.

“The suppliers in turn will not risk throwing more resources in the name of sustaining health care delivery. This eventually has a long term effect on quality of health care and health outcomes”, Dr Issah stated.

The Regional Director mentioned lack of transportation as one of the major setbacks to health care delivery in the Region and and said it would remain a major challenge to Universal Health Coverage if not addressed.

He said for instance out of the 614 motorbikes on inventory, only 204 were on road and utilized for service delivery, making it difficult for the service to conduct outreach services in the communities.

The Regional Director said even though the region had made significant progress in reducing under five mortality rates improvement in the nutritional status of children, improvement in skills delivery and improved physical and financial access to health service, there were still challenges in the areas of low uptake of family planning services, unacceptable level of maternal deaths, low attention for adolescent health and sporadic outbreaks of diseases with epidemic potentials.

He mentioned that as part of measures to help speed up the Universal Health coverage, the Government of Ghana and Korea were in the process of implementing a five year Community-based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) compound Strengthening Project which would begin from 2016 to 2020.

This, he explained, would augment the already 233 functional CHPS zones within the 364 electoral areas which cover 60 per cent of the region’s population.

Whilst commending the development partners including UNICEF, the Regional Coordinating Council, the District Assemblies, traditional authorities and Civil Society Organizations for complimenting the efforts of the Directorate, the Regional Director impressed upon them to continue to support it to achieve its mandate.

Alhaji Abdulai Abubakar, the Regional Coordinating(RCC) Director, who stood in for the Regional Minister, Mr Albert Abongo, challenged the Health Managers to give special attention to adolescent reproductive health issues to help confront health related issues such as teenage pregnancies and abortions.

He gave the assurance that the RCC would continue to play its supervisory roles to ensure that the Assembly continue to support the Health sector particularly in the areas of building Community-based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) compounds and sponsoring of Nurses and Medical students.

The three day review meeting on the theme, ” Improving Adolescent Health Services; The Role of the Community Worker”, attracted stakeholders including UNICEF, District Directors of the Ghana Health, National Directors, National Health Insurance Staff, Civil Society Organizations , Private Service Providers, Religious and Traditional Rulers among others.