NHIS organises sensitisation for newly accredited healthcare facilities

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Kwara State on Wednesday organized a sensitization programme for the newly accredited healthcare facilities.

The forum captured facilities, ministries, departments and agencies, as NHIS seeks to rebrand its services, ROYAL NEWS reports.

Facilitators at the forum, which include Dr. Saka Ismail Agboola, Mrs Arinola Usman and Mr Yusuf Abdulrasaq enlightened the healthcare providers on coverage, challanged faced in the scheme, which include refusal of some facilities to remit the 10 per cent co-payment to the scheme.

The forum also addressed issues bordering accreditation of facilities; rights, commitment and limitations of enrolles; benefits and penalties for healthcare providers, as well as for Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) who do not comply with the scheme’s standard.

In an interview with the General Manager, Kwara NHIS, Mr. Adelaja Abereoran, he revealed that more facilities are joining the scheme at different levels of healthcare provision.

He said, “The idea is a continuous excercise, as people are still coming, while some are onboard before and then there are those whose accreditation are upgraded from certain services to another.

“For example, there are people who are accredited for primary care services, but once they have improved on their personnel and equipment, they are in a position to render secondary services.

“So it’s not all of them that are coming in fresh. Some are already in but are getting accreditation for additional services, either for secondary or tertiary services.”

Abereoran added that NHIS was rebranding as an organisation, part of which was to engage stakeholders, especially to keep newly accredited healthcare facilities abreast of the provisions of its operational framework.

In furtherance, the scheme boss revealed that the rebranding agenda also seek to let representatives of the ministries, department and agencies to know issues they are likely to encounter in the process of assessing care, and to engage everybody so as to solve operational challenges in order to improve on them.

Abereoran also expressed the NHIS’s zero tolerance for non-compliant facilities, whom they would summon and confront with complaints tendered by enrollees.

He further said, “And beyond coming to our office, we have also gone to some of those facilities where we have had to obtain information first-hand both from the practitioners in the facility and the enrolles who have come to assess care. And generally, there have being a lots of improvements and we will continue to monitor their performance.”

Reacting, a newly accredited services provider, Dr. Shuab Abdul, expressed satisfaction about the sensitization forum, as NHIS would ease the burden of bill payment off the shoulders of the low income rural dwellers in Jebba where his medical centre domiciled.