NHIA owes no health facility a year’s arrears in VR

By Samuel Akumatey, GNA

Ho, March 19, GNA - Mr Joseph Homenya, Volta Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), says the Authority does not owe any health facility a year's arrears of debt.

He said his outfit was working to ensure that all accredited health facilities were paid their claims on time.

He said the Authority consistently paid claims, and that with the Government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo paying the over GH¢1.2 billion arrears it inherited, the past two or three years could be described as the “best times” of the NHIS.

Mr Homenya was reacting to a statement by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Region, accusing Government of “peddling untruth about NHIS payments.”

The NDC said, the majority of NHIS accredited facilities in the Region had since January 2019, not been paid their claims, leaving them under resourced to deliver crucial services especially during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

“We can say on authority that upon our investigations, the President and the Finance Minister peddled serious untruth to Ghanaians, because majority of accredited NHIS facilities in the Volta Region have not been paid by the Government since January 2019 to date as claimed”, the statement signed by Kafui Agleze, Regional Communications Officer and copied to the Ghana News Agency said.

The statement listed about 20 facilities in the Region that were being owed arrears ranging from GH¢300,000.00 to over GH¢4,000,000.00.

Notable among them are the Akatsi District Hospital- GH¢2,508,000.00, Sogakope Government Hospital- GH¢2,724,000.00, Volta Regional Hospital- GH¢4,200,000.00, Ho Municipal Hospital- GH¢1,500,000.00, and the Margaret Marquart Hospital- GH¢2,200,000.00.

“The NDC Volta with all these unalloyed facts, call on the government to pay all facilities in the Region as a matter of urgency to enable the facilities build their local capacity and acquire protective gears in the midst of the reported cases of coronavirus in the country,” Mr Agleze said.

Mr Homenya said most facilities had been paid up to July 2019, and that none had claims accumulated for a year.

“If we owe any facility, it should be in the region of four months. We even made some payments last week”, he said.

The Director said the Authority remained committed to effective health delivery in the Region, and called on all to exercise restraint as Government worked round the clock to resource health facilities.

GNA

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