Tamale, May 17, GNA - Mr Sylvester Mensah, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has warned that no Scheme Manager or any other official of the Authority would be permitted to resign until the conclusion of an on-going clinical audit report. The audit report on the operations of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), is expected to be completed July this year. Mr Mensah, who was addressing a meeting of the Scheme Managers and other stakeholders of the Scheme in the northern region in Tamale at the weekend, disclosed that some scheme managers had failed to submit their returns from January 2009 to date. He said this had compelled him to personally travel down to Tamale to collect the returns.

The meeting among other things was to address issues of funding, cost-containment, strengthening of internal controls and fraud and abuses in the system. It also aims at integrating accountability into the NHIS operations before the introduction of the one-time premium payment insurance scheme. Mr Rashid Tanko, Northern Regional Manager of the NHIS said some monies were retrieved from six of the schemes in the region as a result of a clinical audit report carried out on them. He said the amount had already been paid to government coffers. He said the audit report revealed that some Scheme Managers were conniving with service providers to over-price, over-bill or dispense drugs, which were not on the NHIA list to patients. He mentioned the districts involved in such fraudulent activities as the: East Gonja, Gushiegu, Saboba-Chereponi, Savelugu-Nanton and the Tolon-Kumbungu districts.

He said in the light of audit report three service providers in the region, namely Dechas Maternity Home and God Care Community hospital all in the Tamale metropolis and Bruhem clinic in the Savelugu-Nanton district had been suspended from providing service to the scheme. Mr Sam Nasamu Asabigi, Deputy Northern Regional Minister, urged managers of the NHIS to use resources at their disposal judiciously and also ensure that people had access to quality health. He also urged the NHIS to ensure that people who had registered under the scheme got their cards on time to enable them access affordable health care under the scheme. 17 May 10