Our health facilities are suffocating under unpaid debt – Catholic Secretariat

The National Catholic Secretariat has expressed concern about the huge unpaid debt owed to its health facilities by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and said this was paralyzing their operation.

The Very Reverend Father Emmanuel Abbey-Quaye, the Assistant General Secretary, said continued delay in the reimbursement of the mission hospitals and clinics for their services to patients was hitting them hard and becoming more distressing.

He was also dissatisfied with what he said was the uneconomic tariffs paid to the facilities.

The indebtedness and low tariff structure, combined with the withdrawal of government’s subsidies on utilities, goods, services and capital investments, he said, had put enormous pressure financial pressure on them.

The Very Rev Fr Abbey-Quaye raised the concern at the 48th annual conference of the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) in Kumasi.

“Financial sustainability of CHAG at all levels: How do we do things differently” was the theme of the four-day meeting.

It provided the platform to discuss and explore other streams of funding to strengthen the operation of the mission hospitals.

The Very Rev Fr Abbey-Quaye said Catholic health facilities, spread across deprived areas in the country were finding the going tough and appealed to the government to take urgent steps to clear the debt.

This, he said, was necessary to sustain the operation of the facilities and bring quality healthcare to the people.

Source: GNA