Govt announces plan to settle NHIS indebtedness

The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has announced that all debts owed by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) as of May 2016 would be settled by the close of this week.

He also added that government was injecting “some good amount of money” any moment from now to enable the authority settle about three months of the outstanding arrears by end of June this year and after that there will be monthly releases from the Ministry of Finance.

The Minister was speaking at the opening of a four-day 2016 national health sector performance review summit in Kumasi. 

It was on the theme “Accountability in the Health Sector to Achieve the Health related to SDGs”.

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 has raised both efficiency and quality concerns.

The Minster admitted that the government was aware of the challenges confronting the NHIS during the year and while 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.”