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The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has unveiled a brand-new, comprehensive online self-enrolment site to enable enrollment in and renewal of current membership in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
The new program, dubbed “MyNHIS app,” has a variety of user-friendly features, such as allowing those who want to enroll in the NHIS to do so using their smartphones at home rather than needing to do it at an NHIS District Office.
According to National Health Insurance Authority officials, it will also allow users in the program to renew both their own and other registrants’ memberships, access frequently asked questions (FAQs), assist in finding all NHIS offices, and link their NHIS cards to their Ghana cards.
On Monday, December 5, 2022, at the launch in Tamale, Vice President Bawumia recalled that on December 19, 2018, the government had supported Management of the NHIS in launching a mobile renewal system to give members whose cards had expired the convenience of renewing their cards using mobile devices.
“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.
“At present, over 16 million people are active members of the scheme, representing 54% of the population, an increase from 40% in 2019. Out of this number, over 80% are old members who used the mobile application to renew their membership.
“This has reduced the queue as well as the crowd at the offices of the NHIS, especially at the Tamale NHIS Metro Office where we used to see old men and women, pregnant women, the physically challenged queuing from as early as 3:00am just to have the cards renewed in order to access healthcare.
Digitalization 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 MyNHIS app, Dr Bawumia explained, thus serves as an NHIS office in one’s home or pocket.
“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.
“Embedded in the MyNHIS app is a member authentication feature to enable healthcare providers validate the membership status of members of the scheme before providing healthcare to them. This feature of the application will also help to reduce spurious claims, ranging from impersonation and claims manufacturing resulting from collusion between NHIS clients and healthcare providers.
“We believe that this milestone will accelerate progress towards our quest to achieve universal health coverage by 2030,” he indicated.
Speaking earlier, the Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Authority, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye hailed the impact of digitalization on the Scheme, saying it had impacted on every aspect of its operation, from human resource to turn-around times.
“The future, indeed remains digitalization,” he announced.
Additionally, he said that prostate cancer treatment will henceforth be included in the 95% of conditions that are now covered by the NHIS.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
