National Health Insurance Scheme

• Health insurance has come up as a means to provide subscribers with at least basic healthcare even if they are unable to pay.
• Ghana’s public health insurance programme, the National Health Insurance Scheme, was introduced in 2004.
• (The National Health Insurance Scheme estimated the enrolment rate at end of year 2021 at approximately 54%.)
• One motivation for subscribing to the National Health Insurance Scheme would be if non-subscribers made higher out-of-pocket payments for healthcare than subscribers.
• Contrary to expectation, our research found that Ghana’s national health insurance did not reduce out-of-pocket payments for those who had subscribed.

Why enrolment doesn’t pay

• The National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana has historically been bedevilled by several challenges in practice.
• Previous research has reported that it is not uncommon for health facilities to charge both formal and informal fees even to insured clients.
• Health facilities prefer to attend to patients who pay for treatment in cash rather than those who rely on their national health insurance policy to pay.

Some positive news

• There were some positive findings from our research, however.
• We found that very poor households were more likely to enrol in health insurance than other households.

What should be done?

If provider facilities did not discriminate against patients on the basis of who was willing to make a cash payment, and enrolled members did not have to buy the medicines they needed, people would be confident in using their insurance policies and might spend less out of pocket. That might rake in more scheme members, which would increase the financial base of the scheme to keep it running effectively.

• The scheme is currently one of the better-digitalized institutions", said Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana.
• The "MyNHIS" app was developed and implemented by the Austrian-based high-security company Austrian State Printing House (OSD).
• "This milestone marks another successful launch of a digital identity application for OSD," says Claudia Schwendimann, CEO of OSD International.
• The "MyNHIS" app is available for free on the Google Play Store for Android devices and the Apple App Store for iOS devices.

• The MOU sets forth terms and conditions to conduct tests of the UniDoc Virtual Care Solution kiosk system with the intent to formalize a definitive agreement on or by April 16, 2022.
• The Republic of Ghana provides access to a universal health care system under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
• In 2012, over 12 million Ghanaian nationals were covered by the NHIS, with urban centres containing most of the hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies in Ghana.
• UniDoc CEO Antonio Baldassarre states, The dialogue with our potential partners has been very positive to date.