´UER Health Insurance to perform better this year´

The year 2016 would be a year of excellence for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in the Upper East Region, the Regional Director of the Scheme, Mr Sebastian Alagpulinsa, has said.

The Regional Director said this during the 2015 Year Review Performance meeting organised at Bolgatanga adding that the Regional Scheme was one of the best among the ten regions in the country.

Mr Alagpulinsa said the Regional Scheme made significant achievements in 2015, recording 91 per cent membership drive, 84 per cent school enrollment and 66 per cent of indigenes.

“Most of the districts exceeded their set targets and the few that could not do so had unrealistic targets. Again the region made a premium mobilization of 58 per cent also due to unrealistic targets”, he said.

Mr Alagpulinsa said for the year 2016 the Directorate had mapped out strategies to ensure that it performed better than the year 2015 and called on all stakeholders particularly Health Service Providers to support the Scheme to realize the dream.

He said as part of measures to help improve upon the Scheme’s operations, the District Directors have been offered more training and empowered to widen their scope of operations.

The Regional Director said the Directorate would continue to facilitate to ensure that all the District Schemes organised periodic stakeholder engagement meetings to solicit inputs of stakeholders to help improve upon the Scheme as well as brief them about the performance of the Scheme.

He said a satellite office had been established in the Pusiga District and the Scheme had plans in place to open more of such satellite offices in deprived areas in the Region.

Mr Alagpulinsa said considering the poverty level of majority of people in the Region, there is the need for all stakeholders to rally behind the Scheme to enable it deliver on its mandate.

He said change was very important for the Scheme to be sustained and appealed to every stakeholder to abide by any positive change made towards enhancing the operation of the Scheme.

He said the lack of needed logistics such as vehicles and offices as well as co-payments charged by some Health Service Providers were some of the factors militating against the smooth operation of the Scheme.