We Made NHIS Better- Sylvester Mensah

An organized political bad mouthing of Ghana’s Health Insurance scheme has created a wrong perception that the national health insurance policy is a failed one, Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Sylvester Mensah claims.

“The facts on the ground show clearly that the National Health Insurance Scheme has made significant successes and has become better over the years. These are facts that can be verified with specifics but for some reason, political badmouthing has created a wrong impression about our successes…Let us talk specifics on any aspect of this insurance scheme and it would be clear that we have made it better in all sectors although our subscription base has more than quadrupled and yet we have a very thin budget. We have adopted innovative ways of making this scheme better and the evidence is there to show,” he posited.


In a power-point presentation to journalists on how successful the scheme has been, the NHIA boss said, “If we had not put in some of the structures we introduced, we would not have reached where we are now because some people were milking the Scheme and this became evident in our clinical audits and a review of our claims processes. Challenges cannot be avoided but what is significant is that we are finding lasting solutions to them as and when they come up.”


The NHIA Chief Executive also mentioned the Claims Processing Center (CPC) as an innovation that was introduced to block financial leakages that was killing the scheme.

He said the through effective and efficient claims processing, the CPC is able to make an appreciable cost savings by an average of 15% of claims submitted for 2011 and 2012.


“The cash amount that would have gone into private pockets if not the CPC, just for the two years, was GH? 17,325,732. 29,” he said.


Mr. Mensah disclosed that the Division is also piloting the new claims software and electronic claims submission by Providers. He thus appealed to the media to support the health scheme, adding that his outfit’s doors remain open 24/7 for any explanation or clarification the media might need in its reportage.