Mr. James Mettle, Central Regional Manager, National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has called on NHIA workers to develop “the culture of gathering and maintaining credible data at all times” to help the policy achieve its set goals.

This, the Regional Manager emphasised, was the most appreciable contribution that the various District and Municipal Schemes were expected to make in order to promote and sustain the system, and more importantly, to guarantee the workers continued earning of their monthly pay packets under the auspices of the NHIA.

Mr. Mettle was closing a four-day workshop on health insurance operations attended by 78 Core Officers of the Scheme, drawn from the thirteen branch offices in the Central Region at Winneba, at the weekend.

It was designed to keep the officers abreast with the changes being pursued by the NHIA to strengthen the operations of the Policy and make it more cost-saving.

He said one of the surest ways of achieving this laudable feat for the NHIA was to initiate effective measures to curb double registration being practiced by some clients of the Scheme who have defaulted in the renewal of their NHIS Identification Cards; and for fear of being subjected to three months suspension manage to register with another Scheme.

The Regional Manager said that double registration is totally unacceptable as far as the laws and regulations which established the policy was concerned, because it could lead the Region into registering more clients than the official number of people it is expected to register at the end of the day.

Mr. Mettle maintained that even though the Region has a good number of educational institutions, including two Universities and a polytechnic, which easily attract sizeable number of immigrants into the area, that should not be used as an excuse to bloat the figures the NHIA is expected to record in the Region.

He warned NHIA workers who collude with people to execute illicit deals like, the issuance of instant ID Cards and double registration, to desist from such dangerous and unpardonable act because it will only turn out to mar the good works the system is providing Ghanaians.

Messrs Augustine Acquah, a Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the NHIA and William Boateng, ICT Manager, both at the Central Regional Office of the NHIA, advised Ghanaians who have not registered with the Policy to initiate steps to register.

They also advised clients of the Scheme to strive to keep track of the expiring dates of their NHIA ID Cards so they could avoid the three months suspension penalty slapped on clients whose ID Cards have expired for more than three months.

Mr. Acquah and Mr. Boateng who jointly facilitated the two-phased workshop, took participants through the various aspects of the programme which started on May 1.

The first phase of the programme was attended by Scheme Managers, Accountants, and Public Relations Officers, while the second and the last phase designed for Claims Officers, Management Information Systems Officers, and Entry Officers.

They stressed the need for the intensification of public education on renewals, laws and regulations governing the Health Insurance Policy, as well as the maintenance of excellent working relations between Service Providers and the various District and Municipal Health Insurance Schemes in the Region.

The two Regional Unit Officers called for hard work and team spirit among all categories of NHIA workers in the Region to promote higher productivity.**