The newly appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has announced an 18-month ultimatum to completely stamp out the manual processing of claims.

Dr Bernard Okoe Boye also said the Authority will roll out a full-scale electronic claims processing (E-Claims) to expedite management and payment of claims (monies) to National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) healthcare providers across the country.

Speaking at the first-ever ‘Special Board and Executive Management Retreat’ at Peduase, he said 80% of the NHIS expenditure is spent on claims payment and management, however, the manual process possesses several challenges that set easy facilitation of claims back.

Thus, there is an urgent need to devise prudent measures to curb this anomaly and digitization is the way to go.

Recounting some of the gains made through the electronic processing of claims, Dr Okoe Boye reiterated that since its introduction in April 2013, the electronic system has raked in immeasurable benefits to both the NHIA and healthcare providers.

He stated that it facilitates the processing of millions of claims in no time, reduces paper and printing costs, minimizes risk and transportation cost of delivering claims and above all ensures easy detection of fraud and duplicated claims.

Currently, 2,188 out of the over 4,500 providers submit their claims electronically to the NHIA, representing about 48.6%.

Move to migrate the remaining providers forms an integral part of Dr Okoe Boye’s digitisation agenda to make the NHIA one of the most efficient, visible, and viable public institutions in Ghana.

He urged providers who are the major stakeholders of the NHIS to comply with this migration directive, and come aboard the digitization turf to drive the NHIA’s vision of sustaining the scheme beyond its 20-year landmark.