Mampong-Ashanti (Ash), Nov. 23, GNA - The scheduled kick-off date for the Sekyere West District Health Insurance Scheme has suffered a setback because frontline health personnel in the area are ill prepared for the exercise.

The scheme was originally billed to take-off by the end of November but has to be pushed forward to early December in view of the apparent gaps in requisite knowledge and skills of health workers as key implementing partners.

The District Claims Manager, Mr Felix Donkor in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Tuesday said a mock implementation trial to assess the preparedness of health personnel to support the documentation process of the system revealed that most of them lacked basic record entry skills.

He said the Management and Boa rd of the Scheme had thus decided to delay its implementation in order to organise record keeping refresher courses for some categories of facility-based health workers in the District.

Mr Donkor said: "All is set for the scheme to begin, once management and key partners are convinced that the health facilities are prepared to come on board."

The Medical Superintendent of the Mampong Government Hospital, Dr Emmanuel Ahiable said it was important for health workers to be properly trained on the various processes of record keeping to ensure that the scheme did not run into problems.

He said the Hospital would work closely with the administrators of the scheme to train the workers for the timely take-off of the scheme and urged the people to register.