There have been moves to sustain the National Health Insurance Scheme(NHIS) following revelations that the Scheme’s investment cover can cater for its activities for just one month.

This falls short of international practice that requires insurance schemes to have not less than 18 months investment cover.

A document on the Scheme’s financial allocation formula for 2015 seeking parliamentary approval concludes that the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) owes service providers 526 million cedis in claims from July to December, 2014, which would be paid out of the Scheme’s 1.2 billion cedis allocated for 2015.

Joy News’ parliamentary correspondent, Elton Brobbey reports that the membership of parliament came to a conclusion to approve the formula on Wednesday.

The NHIA outlined 18 major activities it has planned for 2015 which include:

Adopting pragmatic strategies to increase active membership coverage of the population by 2% to reach 10.92 million in 2015

Plans to reform and implement efficiency gains measures in claims management and operating expenditure.

Accelerate claims management within the context of e-claims and claims processing centres.

Commence restructuring of the National Health Insurance Scheme to overcome its sustainability challenges.

Introduce e-payment system for premium collections.

On its investment performance, it was noted that the Authority’s investments were fixed deposits with financial institutions, mostly banks. The value of the investment as at January 1, 2014 was GH₵159.92 million. The investment portfolio earned a total interest of GH₵21.7 million for the year.

According to the allocation formula, the balance as at December 31, 2014, stood at GHc104.32 million. The decline in the investment balance was largely due to disinvestments amounting to GH₵97.32 million, which was applied against payment of claims.