The Okyehene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin, has charged management of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to show courage and effect positive changes to improve the scheme.

According to the traditional leader, the scheme needs to improve its services to ensure parity between the rich and the poor in healthcare delivery.

He was addressing the leadership of the NHIA led by Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Dacosta Aboagye who is on a nationwide tour.

The Okyehene bemoaned the challenges of people in rural communities, emphasizing the need for proper decentralisation of governance.

"If we don't change the system, our development will always be baby step development. The English left us a system where we travelled to the capital for everything. Now the British themselves have decentralised, but we still hold on to that system," he observed.

He encouraged leadership of all the government agencies to decentralize and give access to rural folks.

The CEO of NHIA, Dr. Dacosta Aboagye who accepted the challenge thrown by the chief explained attempts by the authority to decentralize.

According to him, numerous district offices of the Authority have been opened in some regions of the country including Ashanti and Eastern Region.

"We will be commissioning a District Office in Manya Krobo, and another one in Suhum is near completion. The contractor explained that the Suhum office is ninety percent complete so we will take delivery of that soon," Dr. Aboagye assured.

He later shared the NHIA’s transformative agenda which includes, mandatory insurance for non-Ghanaians visiting Ghana and annual medical checkup for Ghanaians as part of efforts to reduce treatment cost incurred by the Authority.

Also, plans are in place to deal with illegal payments or co-payments by patients.

Dr. Aboagye emphasized the agenda to formalise the scheme through the securing of national identification cards for some members.

"Formalisation through provision of Ghana card for 6.3 million children aged 6- 14 years, while supporting persons over 15 years and above to integrate their NHIS cards with their Ghana card. This means your Ghana Card number is your NHIS number for medical access," he explained.

Meanwhile, the Ashanti Region office of the NHIA has received a pick up vehicle to augment services delivered to members of the scheme.