Accra, July 31, GNA - The National Health Insurance Council (NHIC) will as from October, this year introduce a new medicine list for the health insurance schemes, Mr Francis Andoh-Adjei, National Schemes Coordinator said on Tuesday.

He said the new medicine list, which was under review would include certain medicines that were not on the previous list and would be implemented based on diagnosis.

Speaking at a day's workshop to update the media on the Service's effort in the implementation of the health insurance policy organized by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with the National Insurance Secretariat, Mr Andoh-Adjei said the review also took into consideration the concerns raised by the public. He explained that the National Health Insurance Schemes (NHIS) Medicines Review Teams, which included stakeholders, had worked on the new list and were seeking for comments and inputs from the public. The existing medicines list lacked essential medicines for the management of certain disease conditions captured under the benefit package and needed to be reviewed to include more medicines to satisfy patients.

He said the new medicine list and the Standard Treatment Guidelines accompanying it would be distributed to all stakeholders. Answering questions on why some people have registered and had taken the scheme a long time in insuring them with their cards, he explained that the whole system was being reviewed and was moving from manual operations to electronic. He said the scheme was being implemented in all the 143 districts throughout the country and had also accredited some private and quasi-institutions to assist in rendering health services under the scheme.

Mr Andoh-Adjei noted that it was unfortunate that the scheme had to service four percent of the Ghanaian population, which were the poor but only two per cent were registered.

Giving the objectives and functions of the Council, he explained that it was to secure the implementation of a national health insurance policy to ensure access to basic health care services of residents. "For the purpose to achieve this, the council has the responsibilities of registering, licensing and regulate health insurance schemes, supervise the operations of insurance schemes, grant accreditation to healthcare providers and monitor their performance as well as ensuring that healthcare services rendered to beneficiaries of schemes by accredited healthcare providers were of good quality". He urged those who have not registered to register to benefit from the quality of services rendered under the scheme. Mr Philip Akanzinge, GHS NHIS Coordinator said it was realized that the exemptions were creating problems since it took the schemes some time to retrieve their monies back.

He noted that people were abusing the system by using cards to collect medicines for their relatives whilst some did not understand the whole concept and advised people not to misuse the system. He noted that there were not enough health facilities closer to members to ensure enrolment, general shortage of health professionals and lack of basic equipments at the lower level facilities had accounted for low enrolment in some areas.

Delays in claims processing resulting in delay in reimbursing health providers, attitude of some health staff and members as well as insufficient education of members and the general public on the concept and the benefit package are some of the challenges facing the schemes". Mrs Rebecca Ackwonu, Public Relations Director of GHS said the benefit package covered in-patient care, emergency and transfer services and out-patient care at primary and secondary levels and 10 top diseases which constituted 80 per cent of diseases in Ghana were covered under package.

Lt.-Col. Ellen Atiemo (Rtd) Chairperson of the Ghana National Health Insurance Oversight Support Team said there was a supervision, monitoring and evaluation system to monitor the administration of the benefit package and use the results to make further changes where necessary.

Dr Elias Sory, Director-General of GHS noted that new structures, significant organizational changes and extensive education of staff have been put in place to help in the implementation of the scheme. "We in the health service have monitored and identified gab in insurance debate and we could use the media to improve the awareness, provide knowledge and effect changes that will move the process forward and faster". 31 July 07