NHIS to commence e renewal of cards

The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) is set to commence the electronic renewal of NHIS cards by 19 December 2018.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to officially launch the project with a dedicated short code available on MTN, Vodafone, and AirtelTigo networks.

The broad goal of the e-renewal project is to achieve universal health coverage through improved access to affordable quality healthcare for all residents in the country and enhance financial sustainability, the Head of Corporate Affairs at the NHIA, Mr. Oswald Essuah-Mensah told the media after a stakeholder engagement in Tamale.

Mr Essuah-Mensah believes the innovation will help the NHIS to increase its membership and also lessen the stress clients go through in renewing their cards.

According to him, about 18 million inactive members are captured on the database of the scheme, whereas at the close of 2017, the active membership base was about 10.58 million.

“This tells us that there is a disconnect between the number of people who have actually been on the scheme before and what we currently find as active members today… Some members may have fallen on the way. Certainly too, one of the challenges that we do know is that when it comes to renewal for our members, this, in itself is a nightmare. A nightmare because currently we have 165 district offices which process 60,000 individual renewal and registrations every year. Now this arrangement means that all the 10.85 million would have to walk through the corridors of the NHIA to register or renew,” he stated.

Mr Essuah-Mensah lamented that this situation is creating administrative bottlenecks for the operations of the NHIS across the country. He said to ensure the country moves in the direction of achieving universal health coverage, “We have to find ways and means to move our active membership, which covers 37 per cent of the population, to higher values.”

The e-renewal has been piloted in the West Mamprusi and Asuogyaman districts of the Northern and Brong Ahafo regions.