Tuesday 8th April , 2014 12:12 pm
Mr. Perry Nelson (in suit) explaining a point to staff
Residents of the Central region of Ghana have expressed satisfaction with the ongoing instant ID card issuance program being implemented by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA).
The new ID card regime based on the subscriber’s biometric information is the NHIA’s solution to the previously challenging ID card management system the Authority ran.
District offices of the NHIA in the region continue to record high turn-outs because of the popularity the instant issuance of the ID cards has garnered.
This observation was made last week during a monitoring tour of the new system in the region by officials of the Authority.
Perry Nelson, Director of Management Information Systems (MIS) at the NHIA who led the 3-man monitoring team, remarked that, the NHIA is implementing the biometric system solution to among other things resolve the data integrity challenges of the Scheme.
According to him, the exercise seeks to clean up the membership database by using a biometric feature of members as a means of preventing duplicate records.
Also, the instant issuance of membership cards will lead to improved card management thus eliminating the hitherto situation where cards were printed several months after registration and stock piled at the district offices with the registered members sometimes nowhere to be found.
The biometric solution which is currently operational in all districts in the Greater Accra and Central regions, according to the NHIA, also creates an effective identification and authentication system at the point of healthcare service delivery and also links membership provider attendance to claims submitted.
The Authority envisages that this will reduce the possibility of fraud in claims payment.
The monitoring team witnessed at first hand the practices, procedures and processes in place at the various districts and shared ideas on how to make the program more efficient and to ensure that subscribers, most importantly, have a less stressful experience when they report to register for their new Instant ID cards.
The NHIA has hinted that Eastern and Ashanti regions will be the next roll-out regions for the instant ID card issuance system.
The biometric ID card roll-out is one of many initiatives the Authority is hoping to consolidate this year as part of a raft of measures being employed by management of the Scheme to inject more efficiency into the running of the NHIS.
Other members of the three-man team were Oswald Essuah-Mensah, Marketing Manager and Samuel Anim, an ICT Trainers with the NHIA.
The three day tour took the team to Agona Swedru, Twifo Praso, Elmina, Cape Coast, Saltpond, Apam, Winneba and Kasoa.
They also met with some District Chief Executives, staff of the NHIA District Offices and interacted with some subscribers of the scheme.
Source: NHIA