Cost of dialysis to be captured by NHIS permanently soon – CEO of NHIA

Government says plans are far advanced to add kidney disease dialysis permanently to ailments covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme.

CEO of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Dr. Da-Costa Aboagye says the board will be meeting next month to bring finality to the decision.

The NHIA in June started absorbing the cost of dialysis for all patients at varying amounts, with the vulnerable group receiving free eight sessions per month. While others had their sessions subsidized.

The Government’s free dialysis program which started four months ago is scheduled to end in two months. Since the announcement of the initiative, calls had emerged questioning the way forward after the six months duration elapses.

This concern is coupled with a myriad of challenges that initially confronted the program, resulting in a number of agitations from the renal disease patients.

But the CEO of the authority has allayed all concerns, assuring of plans to sustain the initiative.

He said: “The team has looked at the data, and we now know that by the data, we can support the dialysis patients to the extent that they are even not able to use the amount of money we’ve been giving them. So, there will be positive news, I think, from next month going.  The board actually needs to decide on the way forward immediately… What we have even realized is that we are even spending less because the money we’ve even given to the facilities, they are not even able to use it because we only use projected figures, because they submitted the list initially. So, what this means is that we are now having the actual cost of the dialysis based on the people assessing it from the specialized facilities that we selected. So we will use this to project and roll it out across the country”.

According to him, all outstanding issues with the start of the program has been dealt with.

“So, we started in June, but we paid June and July, then we paid August and September upfront in such a way that the facilities will get money to work. So initially, when the facilities were trying to adjust to the extent that we issued a statement that any patient who paid in June should be refunded to today. Ask the patient if they have received their moneys or not.

They have received their moneys. Major Ankara is their leader, yes. So he told me that what we have done for them is really unprecedented, and to be honest with you, they have received their moneys, but Korle Bu had a special case. For Korle Bu, they had a philanthropist who was actually giving them some subsidy as well. So, for us to bring everybody to the level playing ground or level playing field, what we decided to do was to weigh what Korle Bu patients were getting against what the others were getting. And we use the equity concept to allocate the funds.” He further noted.

Government’s six-month free dialysis program for the renal disease patients came off after weeks of sustained discussions from the general public on issues bordering on dialysis in the country.

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