Prof. Frimpong-Boateng calls for review of National Health Insurance Capitation system

Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, a renowned Heart Surgeon, has called for a review of the Capitation system being piloted in the Ashanti Region by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to make it more beneficial to both service providers and the citizenry.

He said right from the initial stages of its implementation about two years ago, the programme was met with resistance from private healthcare providers, who argued that the GHȼ2.00 being paid as premium for each patient was woefully inadequate for even the commonest disease like malaria.

This, he said, coupled with unpaid claims prompted the withdrawal of some health facilities already accredited to the NHIS since they saw the Capitation system as an attempt to collapse their businesses.

Professor Frimpong-Boateng, who is also the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, was speaking in Kumasi on Friday at the fifth anniversary celebration of the Bekamas Medlabx and Diagnostics Centre Limited, private medical laboratory services located at Mbrom in Kumasi.

He asked why people in the region should be made to bear the brunt of such challenges when the government initially planned to replicate the Capitation system in other parts of the country.

The cardio specialist lauded the Bekamas Centre for the significant strides it had made in providing quality and standard diagnostic services and hoped that after hitting its fifth milestone it would do more to contribute effectively to the health needs of the people.

He advised the staff to show more commitment to the work whilst shunning pilfering and laziness to help expand the business and thus create employment for more people.

Mr Kojo Omono Asamoah, Managing Director (MD) of Bekamas Centre, called for the strict enforcement of Legislative Instrument (LI) regulating laboratory practice in the country to ensure sanity whilst weeding out quacks from the system.

The MD called on private and public health service laboratory practitioners to complement each other to boost health service delivery in the country.

He said the centre, with state-of-the-art equipment, ran all cardio enzymes and other tests on heart-related diseases and invited colleagues not to hesitate to bring their samples for tests.

Mr Isaiah Offei-Gyimah, the Administrator of KATH, appealed for the setting up of more private health facilities to help ease congestion at the public hospitals.

Source: GNA