More register with NHIS in Upper East
The National Health Insurance Authority in the Upper East Region exceeded its membership drive target in 2016.
Out of 652,082 membership drive target assigned to the region, it was able to register 657,782 members.
The Upper East Regional Manager of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Mr Sabastian Alagpulinsa made this know when he paid a courtesy call on the Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Rockson Ayine Bukari to brief him on the state of the scheme in the region.
District Performance
He said some of the districts had achieved more than 80 per cent of their membership targets with Bawku Municipality and Builsa North exceeding their annual membership targets with a membership enrolment of 146,058.
He said in trying to achieve the goal of the scheme, the regional and district offices were given targets to deliver in terms of the registration of the poor.
"Thus, our region in 2016 was given an indigent registration target of 158,571 and by close of the year a total of 182,904 members had been registered.
He said Kassena Nankana achieved 38,186 out of a target of 10,100 representing 378 per cent, Builsa had a target of 8,238 and achieved 12,439 representing 151 per cent, Talensi-Nabdam had a target of 15,395 and achieved 22,587 representing 147 per cent, Bawku Municipal had a target of 33,043 and achieved 36,335 representing 110 per cent with the rest of the districts exceeding 75 per cent of their indigent targets.
Challenges
Mr Alagpulinsa said in spite of that performance, the authority had a lot of challenges ranging from staffing, office accommodation, transportation to ICT.
He said the region had a total staff strength of 183 with a number of existing vacancies across the nine functional districts, including the satellite office in Pusiga with the major area were they lack staff was their ICT departments.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Bukari urged the staff of the authority to be proactive in giving timely information to their clients whenever they had problems with their operations to prevent people form speculating and bringing unnecessary tension in the region.
He said government was working to clear all arrears owed to service providers.