Ghanaians will from tomorrow be able to use their mobile phones to register for and renew their national health insurance cards. This is after the project was out-doored by President Akufo Addo. This technology forms part of a communication strategy adopted by the National Health Insurance Authority to improve quality health care towards achieving a universal health-care coverage.
Deputy Director of Corporate Affairs at the National Health Insurance Authority, Oswald Essuah-Mensah, made it known at a media interaction in Ho. Explaining how the system works, Mr Essuah-Mensah said it involves the use of a short code *929# on all networks. He said clients will have options to check policy validity, renewal of membership, benefit packages, and the more than 500 medicine list for only one Cedi per renewal.
Ghana is part of the global community that have signed to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. Coverage of the country’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is hovering around 37 percent. Officials of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) indicate that Ghana is far from achieving its universal health coverage, and needs to do a lot more. They hope to scale up active members from the current 37 percent to a full coverage.
Currently acquisition and renewal of the national health insurance card is processed at the district level. This is often characterised by administrative challenges making it quiet ineffective coupled with poor member experiences. Deputy Director of Corporate Affairs at the National Health Insurance Authority, Oswald Essuah-Mensah expressed the need to address identified administrative bottlenecks to achieve the required Universal Health coverage by 2030. The Mobile phone services innovation, is therefore part of a broader communication strategy to enhance operations of the scheme.
