The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) is indebted to healthcare providers to the tune of GHc270million.

The money is the accumulation of unpaid claims since February this year.

This was disclosed at the first media encounter with the acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NHIA, Nathaniel Otoo, in Accra.

Mr Otoo, answering questions from the media after a presentation on the NHIA activities, said the authority was working to settle the debt to healthcare providers.

He said the debts owed had been paid up till February this year, with plans to pay the money till June this year which is the three months stipulated time by which the authority is mandated to pay the claims arrears.

“We have released quite some money especially for the month of February, we have also engaged the entire executives of the private healthcare providers and explained to them the challenges that we have but also the steps we are taking to resolve it,” he added.

Mr Otoo further observed that the authority was looking at releasing the rest of the money within a week to clear another month’s claims, “so we will be in the time frame for payments to be done.”

NHIS Challenged

He admitted that the authority is facing challenges but refuted the argument that it is collapsing.

He said the scheme is increasingly recording high registrations with about 10.5 million active card users and 4,000 healthcare providers which indicated public trust in the scheme.

He, however, added that cost of healthcare was also rising with the increasing membership and the cost of medication which sometimes make it difficult to pay claims as stipulated.

“Is it not all rosy, like any system in the world, we have challenges and we have to address them,” he said.

He said that notwithstanding; the NHIA was putting in place initiatives to sustain the scheme.

He said the NHIA was in talks with the Ministry of Health to start a reform process that would help generate some income to the authority.

Mr Otoo said they were in talks with the MoH to come out with a framework for engaging large organisations for the procurement of medicine which would help reduce the cost of buying from different sources.

He also noted that NHIA was looking at increasing the cost of processing fees for registration. “This is to help us generate revenue for the authority’s processes.”