Health Minister announces plan to settle NHIS arrears

The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has given an assurance that arrears owed by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to service providers for May 2016 will be settled by the close of this week.

He further indicated that the government would inject “some good amount of money” into the scheme any moment from now to enable the authority to settle about three months’ arrears owed service providers by the end of June this year, after which there would be monthly releases from the Ministry of Finance to settle arrears owed service providers of the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS).

The minister was speaking at the opening of the 2016 National Health Sector Performance Review and Summit in Kumasi yesterday.

He said while funding for the health sector in the year under review improved nominally, overall expenditure per capita dropped, with reimbursements from the NHIA suffering the most in recent years, adding that that observation raised both efficiency and quality concerns.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said the government was aware of the challenges confronting the NHIS, for which reason steps were being taken to address them.

“We are also very much concerned about the increasing cost per encounter and the wide range of exceptions which continue to pose a challenge to the fund,” he said.

Restructure

He said the government had commenced discussions on the need to restructure the scheme to make it more efficient.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said the government was listening carefully to the views that were coming up and at the appropriate time it would respond constructively.

Casual workers

The minister directed all sectors under the ministry to cease the recruitment of casual workers.

He added that all facilities and directorates were to submit a list of casual workers on their staff being paid with internally generated funds by the end of April this year.

He wondered why some of the facilities had been engaging casual workers for as long as 14 years, while the Labour Law stated that casual workers should not be engaged for more than six months.

That development, he explained, had led to a myriad of court suits against the ministry, hence the need to halt those engagements.

Mortality

Mr Agyeman-Manu said although the health sector made some strides in other areas, the performance in institutional maternal mortality and still-birth rates and the proportion of pregnant women who received anti-retrovirals to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV deteriorated.

 

He described the 2016 performance as mixed because while some successes were chalked up in some aspects, other aspects faced challenges.

The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has given an assurance that arrears owed by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to service providers for May 2016 will be settled by the close of this week.

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