Ghana will soon have one of the most digitalized healthcare systems in Africa – Dr Bawumia

home to the world’s largest fleet of medical-delivery drones.

“Zipline drones have undertaken 278,936 flights since their inception, making over 12 million deliveries, comprising of 8.63 million lifesaving medical products or medicines, about 1.9 million child immunization vaccine consumables and over 1.9 million COVID-19 vaccines and PPEs. It has also made very significant savings for the nation, both in lives and resources,” he revealed. The Vice President noted that Ghana’s medical drone delivery service is the largest in the world and saving many lives daily.

NHIS

Lauding the management of the National Health Insurance Authority for infusing digitalization into the operations of the NHIS, Vice President Bawumia said the Scheme, since its introduction, has no doubt, contributed to increased utilization of healthcare services, leading to improved health outcomes of the population.

“The NHIS has gone through several reforms over the years to improve its services to the members. On 9th November, 2019, I personally launched the NHIS- Ghana card linkage at the Accra International Conference Centre and today, over 5 million members of the NHIS have been linked to their Ghana Cards to enable them to use the Ghana card to access healthcare since 1st of May, 2020.

“Hopefully, when all members of the scheme are linked to their Ghana Cards, the NHIS card will be phased out and the Ghana Card will be the sole card for accessing healthcare services in the credentialled healthcare facilities.

“Aside this, Government has also embarked on a project, together with the National Identification Authority (NIA), National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Ghana Health Service, and Births and Deaths Registry, to link births and deaths data to the NIA database to give unique identification numbers to all newborn babies starting first quarter of next year.

“The NHIA has implemented electronic medical claims (Claim-IT) to reduce turnaround time for claims preparation and submission and reduce spurious claims and cost to the scheme for increased sustainability.

“Currently, close to 3000 healthcare providers, representing 70% are submitting medical claims electronically. The scale-up of this digital innovation is ongoing. All providers submitting manual claims have been trained and hopefully, the over 5000 credentialed healthcare providers of the scheme will start submitting electronic claims by end of the second quarter of 2023.”

As well, healthcare providers wishing to join the scheme can now apply using an online application system, reducing the turnaround time for processing the applications as well as saving cost of paper applications with copies of accompanying documents such as certificates and travelling cost.

The NHIA is also updating its database with the locations of all facilities by picking the GPS coordinates in line with the Government’s Agenda on address system to ease communication and assessment, according to officials of the Scheme.

The launch in 2018 of the NHIA Electronic receipting platform to enhance social auditing and accountability of revenue collection at NHIA district offices across the country has helped to establish daily premium collection and improve accountability and transparency in revenue mobilization, NHIA officials say. It has also substantially promoted electronic reconciliation of financial account and promoted transparency and efficiency in the financial operations of the scheme.

Highlighting other digital interventions, such as the introduction of a mobile renewal system to enable old members whose cards have expired to conveniently renew their cards using mobile phones, and the launch today of an improved portal dubbed “MyNHIS app” which allows new members to register using the Ghana Card, Dr Bawumia challenged the NHIA to continue to introduce digital innovations in other operational areas of the scheme to improve services for the members.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and its allied agencies are also seriously brainstorming on telemedicine, making it possible for Ghanaians to receive medical advice via their phones and other devices.

This, coupled with the many interventions in the provision of healthcare and the impending roll-out of the National E-Pharmacy platform has truly set Ghana on the path of having one of Africa’s most digitalized healthcare systems, Dr Bawumia declared.