By Stanley Senya
Accra, Oct. 21, GNA – The Private Health Facilities Association of Ghana (PHFAoG), has appealed to the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to increase tariffs on medications to help render smooth services.
Dr. Kwame Buabeng-Frimpong, President of Private Health Facilities Association of Ghana (PHFAoG), who made the appeal in a stakeholder meeting said healthcare was a shared responsibility and the government had a major stake in helping to minimize or eliminate the numerous challenges confronting the private health service provisions.
The meeting was to address current challenges facing the Private Health Facilities in Ghana to stakeholders and find solutions to them.
Dr Buabeng-Frimpong, also appealed to the NHIA to ensure adequate funds were allocated for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to guarantee smooth running of operations of the scheme.
He said the National Health Insurance Authority had many times failed to honour its obligations in paying claims within three months of submission, which affected the day-to-day operations of facilities.
“Many patients who visit private health facilities are registered on the insurance scheme, which creates financial crisis on the operations of facilities.
“Even though efforts of the NHIA was laudable, the recently implemented NHIS tariffs for medicines and services still do not reflect true prevailing market variables, “he added.
Dr Isaac Charles Noble Morrison who read a speech on behalf of the Board chairman of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), said monies from government were not directly given to the Authority, and they only acted or performed when heads of states granted the allocations that were stipulated in their formula and approved by parliamentary select committee on health.
He said leaders of both public and private facilities must come out with pragmatic solutions to help solve the problems.
“The NHIA is doing its best to help eliminate or reduce the long periods of waiting to reimburse,” he said.
The Authority is looking forward to include private health facilities in discussions involving tariffs. he said.
He assured that the NHIA would try to help curb such problems.
Mr Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, Member of Parliament for Assin Central Constituency, urged all private facilities and pharmaceutical owners to appeal to government to subsidize locally manufactured medicines, to help make medicines affordable to customers.
“There must be incentives given to locally manufactured medicines to make prices of medicines affordable,” he added.
He said that would help cover most of medicines on the National Health Insurance Scheme, patients benefitted from.
Later in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Dr Buabeng-Frimpong said “It is pathetic to know that while private health service providers make frantic efforts to support the blueprints of Government in making healthcare accessible and affordable to the good people of Ghana, we get confronted with series of challenges which consistently and persistently teared our efforts”.
GNA