Three Upper East hospitals to go biometric

Three major Hospitals in the Upper East Region are to go biometric in the vetting and facilitating of payment claims by service providers under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) beginning December 2013.

The Navrongo War Memorial, Bolgatanga Regional and Bawku Presbyterian Hospitals would be part of the national programme that would be rolled out to manage vetting of claims of service providers in the region.

Mr Sylvester Mensah, Chief Executive Officer of NHIS, said this after the President, Mr John Mahama commissioned an office block in Bolgatanga to house the NHIS office.

He said the NHIS was concerned with the challenges beneficiaries incurred in gaining access to their NHIS cards and said that would soon be a thing of the past as the new biometric system to be put in place.

Mr Mensah said access to health and utilization of NHIS cards was increasing each year with utilization increasing to 25.4 million from 5 million in 2007 and then to 12.5 million in 2008.

He said the increasing rate represented a growing public interest in the scheme and efforts are being made to ensure Ghanaians gained access health care services.

Mr Mensah said the NHIS would establish call centers at the point of service throughout the country to receive complaints and ensure rapid response to issues that arise from them.

Source: GNA