The Vice President, Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has launched another innovative digital solution to bring access to healthcare services in the country to the pockets Ghanaians. The mobile application dubbed, “My NHIS App” is another landmark initiative by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to enable people sit at the comfort of their homes to register to join the scheme.
The application will also enable members of the scheme to renew their membership and that of third parties, access frequently asked questions (FAQs), aid in location of all NHIS Offices and link NHIS cards to their Ghana cards.
In his keynote address on Monday, December 5, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia said the government in 2019 supported Management of the NHIS to launch a mobile renewal system to enable members whose cards have expired to conveniently renew their cards, using mobile phones, without walking to the NHIS branch office.
According to the Vice President, this digital innovation has led to remarkable increase in the proportion of members who renew their membership annually, thereby improving population coverage of the scheme.
He indicated at present times, over 16 million people are active members of the scheme, representing 54% of the population, an increase from 40% in 2019 and out of this number, over 80% are old members who used the mobile application to renew their membership.
Digital Agenda
Dr Bawumia intimated this has reduced the queues as well as the crowd at the offices of the NHIS and stated the digitalization drive has made it possible by just dialing *929# and follow through the process to instantly renew your card without travelling to the office to queue.
The Vice President explained that Management of the NHIS has gone a step further to make it possible for people to use the mobile application to register as new members using your Ghana card.
“Today, this mobile application, dubbed “MyNHIS app” will be launched to enable people to sit at the comfort of their homes to register to join the scheme. It will also enable members of the scheme to renew their membership and that of third parties, access frequently asked questions (FAQs), aid in location of all NHIS Offices and link NHIS cards to their Ghana cards.”
The New NHIS mobile app will operate on both Android and iOS smartphones and will allow NHIS members to securely pay registration and membership renewal fees from their mobile money wallets, Bank and Visa cards.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia believes that this milestone will accelerate progress towards Ghana’s quest to achieve universal health coverage by 2030.
Meanwhile, the application has a member authentication feature embedded in it to enable healthcare providers validate the membership status of members of the scheme before providing healthcare to them. This feature of the application is aimed to reduce spurious claims, ranging from impersonation and claims manufacturing resulting from collusion between NHIS clients and healthcare providers.
The Chief Executive Officer of the NHIA, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, for his part said Ghana set out 19 years ago on a mission to provide financial risk protection for its citizens and to reduce the dangers of resting access to healthcare on the shoulders of the cash and carry system which brought about the introduction of the NHIS by former President John Agyekum Kufuor.
The extent of this healthcare service provision he noted is however entrenched in their ability to increase membership to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030 as designed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
To this end, Dr Okoe Boye stated that digitization has played a major role in positively impacting on the operationalization of the Scheme and the numbers enrolled onto the National Health Insurance Scheme database which currently, the Scheme covers over 70% of the population with about 54% as active members.
NHIS Month
The CEO announced the governing Board and Executive Management of the NHIA as part efforts have extended the annual NHIA weeklong celebration to a month to effectively propagate the NHIS message all and sundry.
Dr Okoe Boye maintained the month-long celebration this December is christened “NHIS ACTIVE MONTH” and it is a clarion call to every resident in Ghana to have medical insurance with the NHIS as the Scheme approaches its 20th anniversary in 2023.
Highlighting on the theme, “The Role of Digitization in Modern Healthcare Delivery: Recounting Ghana’s ICT Journey In The 4th Republic”, the Chief Executive said the digitization journey at the National Health Insurance Authority has been a steady phenomenal process especially these past few years where it feeds into a bigger government agenda heavily superintended by the Digitization Messiah himself, H.E Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
He therefore commended the Akufo-Addo government for the tremendous support the NHIA has received over the years to provide quality service to the populace.
