NHIA Chief Executive maintains consulting services

The Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Dr. Okoe Boye, has reappropriated his timetable to do general consulting services.

Dr. Okoe Boye on Monday spent considerable hours at the Lekma Hospital in Accra, where he interfaced with 20 patients.

Seventeen of the patients he dealt with were active members of the NHIS. The patients who were privileged to have the NHIA Chief Executive attend to them commended him for not abandoning the Lekma Hospital, following his appointment.

He urged them to promptly renew their membership cards, using the Mobile Renewal Service short code *929# as the NHIS remains the surest way to reduce out-of-pocket payment of healthcare services.

The NHIA CEO appealed to the general population to get enrolled onto the NHIS, and take advantage of the generous benefit package available on the Scheme. The NHIS prides itself in covering over 95 percent of disease conditions that exist in Ghana.

He recounted the upward adjustment of NHIA medicine tariffs by some 30 percent meant to ensure that health facilities will have essential drugs available to take care of the public.

“The NHIS Medicines List which is a subset of the National Essential Drug List has over five hundred (500) formulations to treat a wide spectrum of disease conditions in the country. The NHIS is undoubtedly a critical funding source for most public healthcare providers.

“Lekma Hospital, like many other health facilities in Ghana, is heavily reliant on NHIS card bearers, whose patronage constitutes over 80% of their internally-generated funds that sustains the running of the facility,” he stated.

Transformation strategy

Dr. Okoe Boye reaffirmed his vision to make the NHIA one of the best public sector organisations in Ghana, saying, “he will empower staff, strengthen the NHIA brand, and leverage the organisation’s resources to execute its strategic plan”.

“My vision is to make the NHIA the most visible and reliable public organisation, with the most vibrant staff and I promise to evaluate the current structure of the Authority to make the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) more efficient,” he added.