The Bono Regional office of the National Health Insurance Authority has said co-payment has been identified as a factor that makes clients lose interest in the insurance scheme.

Some healthcare providers continue to charge patients for services marked as benefits under the National Health Insurance Scheme.

The Regional Manager of the NHIA, Joseph Mensah, described the situation as challenging, as it affects healthcare delivery “leading to some of the clients losing interest in the scheme”.

According to him, “The Authority has decided to clamp down on the issue of co-payment going on in various facilities,” and further said, “A committee has been successfully set up to handle all issues of co-payment at the regional and district levels”.

The Authority, however, appealed to clients to be bold and report additional charges by providers to their offices to help them retrieve the money and halt the practice.

Mr. Mensah was speaking at the 2022 end-of-year performance review meeting at the Bono Regional office of the NHIA. The meeting, with attendees, including staff from the district offices, was to take stock of its activities and help them plan a clear path to achieve their targets for 2023.

In addition to the prevalence of co-payment in some provider facilities, Mr. Mensah also identified inadequate logistics as another challenge affecting their operations, and when addressed, could help them cover about 95 percent of the population.

The regional office of the NHIA's mandate is mostly monitoring and evaluation of their district offices and health-providing partners, in a bid to ensure compliance with various policies under the scheme.

Out of an annual enrolment target of 1,005,735, the region achieved a 99.6 percent enrolment, including fresh registration, renewal, indigents, pregnant women, children, prisoners, etc.

“The Bono region topped the Universal Health Coverage league table with 80.8 percent population coverage and also exceeded its indigent enrollment target”.

As part of the NHIA’s partnership with the 4 Ghana Premier League newcomers in 2022 for five years, the regional manager said they had been present at 9 home matches of Nsuatreman FC at Nsuatre and registered a total of 1,496 people for free.

On claims of providers, he revealed that “The Authority has reimbursed most of our credentialed health providers up to August 2022 and still counting”, adding that the tariffs and medicines were also increased to meet the market conditions at the time.

On revenue mobilization, Mr. Joseph Mensah said a sum of GH₵ 7,386,686.96 out of an annual target of GH₵ 10,220,919.70, was realized, representing 72 percent, at the end of the period, with 60 percent of their district offices exceeding their 2022 targets.

He acknowledged the giant strides made in 2022, including E-renewal (mobile phone membership renewal), E- claims (electronic means of sending claims), and the “my NHIS app" (registration of new members via the app), urging clients to make use of the comfortable innovations.

The Bono Regional Manager of NHIA, Joseph Mensah, said despite their successes, they are determined to help more clients link their membership cards to their Ghana cards, regularly have the Monitoring and Evaluation and co-payment committee teams visit provider sites to ensure compliance and regular stakeholder engagements for improved performance in 2023.