Network failure slows down issuance of NHIS cards
Some National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) registration centres in Accra have been shut down for close to two weeks due to a breakdown of the system, making it impossible for NHIS cards to be issued or renewed.
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The situation has left some clients of the scheme stranded in the offices of the scheme and compelled others, especially pregnant women and the aged, to pay cash at healthcare centres.
But in the northern parts of the country, the system is running smoothly, with the scheme registering new members and renewing the cards of old clients.
NHIS response
Responding to the situation, the Deputy Director of Communications at the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Mr Selorm Adonoo, said despite the problems being faced at certain NHIS registration centres, efforts had been made to enhance the delivery of operations at various centres in the country.
According to him, the NHIA had set very high targets and the authority was focused on achieving the goal of registering as many people as possible.
Mr Adonoo, therefore, gave an assurance that the problem would be rectified as soon as possible.
Accra
When the Daily Graphic visited some of the NHIS centres at Dansoman, Awoshie and Sowutwom in Accra last Wednesday, there were no clients, as officials of those centres stood at the entrances of the buildings to turn people away.
The disappointed clients, who had come to renew their cards, were advised to seek medical treatment at their own expense until the system was fixed.
Some of them were also directed to check other NHIS centres to see whether the problem had been solved for them to renew their cards.
However, at the Osu-Klottey and Okaikoi North District centres, the problem had been rectified with hundreds of people queuing to either renew their cards or register.
The officials who spoke to the Daily Graphic said the problem had been solved at the two centres and that they were fully operational.
Asked whether the centre encountered any technical breakdown, the District Manager of Osu-Klottey NHIS office, Mr Peter Awidi, said the centre did not experience any system failure.
At the Okaikoi North centre, an official of the NHIS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was a system breakdown for about a week but it was fixed last Monday.
“It is true that we had a problem with our system, and we could not register or renew the NHIS cards of people but management has rectified it,” the official said.
Frustrated applicants
Elizabeth Owusu, a student said she had visited the Sowutoum and Dansoman centres to check whether she could register for the NHIS since “the one close to my house at Awoshie has not been operational for weeks.”
“The officials told me that their system had developed a technical problem so they cannot issue or renew HNIS cards,” she said.
Another frustrated client, Madam Cynthia Tawiah, said she had been going to the Dansoman NHIS centre for the past one week but she had still not been served.
“Am I supposed to wait for them to finish before I can go and access healthcare at a government hospital?,” she asked.
From Tema, Della Russel Ocloo reports that bearers of National Health Insurance (NHIS) cards had over the past three weeks not been able to renew their cards.
It followed what officials of the Tema Metropolitan office of the NHIA described as a system challenge that the service had been experiencing lately.
In the same vein, first time registrants wishing to acquire the cards are unable to do so.
As such, activities at the Tema office had slowed down, as the workers in charge of the registration and renewal often had very little to do during working hours.
Persons seeking to renew or register are thus sent away by security men at the offices.
Scores of people from Tema, Ashaiman, Kpone and its environs who visited the office on a daily basis to check on the progress were left disappointed as they were turned away.
A first-time registrant, Mr Walter Ameho, who had been visiting the office over the past three weeks, told the Daily Graphic that he only managed to get registered onto the scheme at the Adentan office of NHIA after he could not do so at the Tema office.
Another client, Mr Richard Fenyi, who was also at the office last Thursday to renew his card, said he had been unable to access healthcare following his inability to renew the card.
Smooth operations
Meanwhile, at the municipal office in Wa in the Upper West Region, officials of the NHIA were attending to subscribers without any hitches, reports Michael Quaye from Wa.
There were at least 25 people in a queue on the premises when the Daily Graphic visited in the morning, and there was hardly any sign of the frustration that was once a common feeling among subscribers at that office.
One subscriber who had come to renew her card said she was hopeful she would leave within 40 minutes, judging by the speed of the process.
Tamale
The story was not different in Tamale in the Northern Region from where Samuel Duodu reports that the renewal of NHIS cards for subscribers in the Tamale Metropolis is ongoing at the metro office of the scheme in Tamale.
This came to light when the Daily Graphic visited the Tamale Metro office of the NHIS last Thursday to verify whether the renewal processes were ongoing.
As at 10.30a.m., some subscribers whose cards had expired were spotted going through the renewal processes while new registrants were also being registered.
The Tamale Metro Manager of the NHIS, Mr Mohammed Abdul Salaam, told the Daily Graphic that they had all the consumables such as the ribbons and cards in place to renew the biometric ID cards of subscribers whose cards had expired.
Membership
Mr Salaam stated that as of August 31, 2016 the scheme had a total of 111,574,000 subscribers and the number kept on increasing by the day, adding that the membership was about half of the population of the metropolis.
He added that with the biometric registration, the waiting period was only one month but that had been waived for pregnant women and children less than five years.
Mr Salaam advised subscribers of the NHIS not to wait till their cards expired before they renewed them but they could do so about a month or two to the expiration of the card in order to continue to enjoy the benefits under the scheme.