The Northern Regional Secretariat of the National Health Insurance Authority has captured a total of 1,138,642 people onto the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2014 from the 967,212 existed members.

The figure represents 36.84 per cent of the projected 40.96 per cent of the population of Northern Region, Mr Hudu Iddrisu, Northern Regional Director of the NHIA has announced at the Annual Review meeting of the Authority in Tamale.

The Annual Review meeting was a significant event in the NHIA calendar of activities, which enabled them to define their focus, refine their strategies and reconsider their targets and to map out the scope and parameters of their programmes.

Alhaji Iddrisu said out of the figure, 258,214 represented the poor while 102,576 represented school children who registered under the school’s enrollment exercise conducted last year and commended the staff for the hard work that captured many people on to the scheme.

He however, decried the low revenue mobilization drive due to several challenges such as low income rate of the people, low premium rate and high premium exempt group among other problems confronting the scheme in the Region.

He said during the year under revenue, funds released for claims payment to providers was GH¢43,536,181.36, which was made up of GH¢33,578.32 to the district and GH¢9,957,296.05 to providers who submitted directly and that with a revenue target of GH¢2,923,409.32 for 2014, they were only able to mobilize GH¢1,633,379.51 representing 56 per cent, which accidentally happened to be the lowest nationwide.

Mr Iddrisu said there will be a roll-out of Biometric instant ID card insurance in the Region before the end of the second quarter to put an end to impersonation and provider shopping, better authentication at provider sites and a lot more in order to improve upon their output.

He advised staff of the NHIA to ensure greater operational and financial efficiency and avoidance of unreasonable expenditures since they still had the responsibility to improve on their revenue mobilization drive in the Region.

He expressed the hope that the NHIA would meet its revenue and membership drive targets for 2015 and appealed to colleagues to work harder than before to ensure that they succeeded in meeting their targets.