……We’ll delist underperforming facilities
Nasarawa State Health Insurance Agency (NASHIA), has threatened to delist any medical facility found wanting in delivering quality health services to the people.
Dr Yahaya Ubam, Executive Secretary of the agency stated this at an event to mark the 2023 Universal Health Coverage Day on Tuesday in Lafia with the theme: “Health for All, Time for Action.”
He said that the Agency was commited to ensuring that the people access quality and affordable healthcare services, hence no room for compromise by healthcare services providers under its health insurance scheme.
Ubam, represented by Pharm. Maikudi Kaki, Director, Medical Services, Standard and Quality Control of the agency, pointed out any facility found wanting would be delisted from the scheme and their enrollees transferred to another facility nearby in order for them to continue to access healthcare.
He urged healthcare service providers to exhibit professionalism in their conduct and provide the desired services to their enrollees in order to build the people’s confidence in the scheme.
He added that the agency had received several complaints from enrollees about poor service delivery by some healthcare facilities and were taking steps to address them.
The executive secretary maintained that enrollees were at liberty to change any service provider to another when it fails to meet their healthcare services as captured in the scheme.
He said that the agency had concluded plans to ensure that all state and local government workers enrolled in the scheme.
“All the staffers of tertiary institutions, Judiciary, House of Assembly, including students of the tertiary institutions will be made to enroll in the next few months.
“The law establishing the agency had made it mandatory for all civil servants in the state to enroll in the scheme and we will enforce that to achieve universal health coverage” he added.
Ubam further explained that the agency had set a target to register 500, 000 persons into the scheme by 2027.
“To achieve this, therefore, we must explore all avenues to create robust awareness and make registration simplest for everybody.
“We will create a platform where people can enroll in the comfort of their homes and offices once they have Android phones and have access to the internet,” he said.
He said that more than 237, 000 persons have been enrolled into the scheme and were already benefiting from the quality healthcare services.
Ubam explained that the beneficiaries were registered under different packages such as public sector, informal sector, vulnerable and students among others.
Also speaking, Dr Simon Istifanus, Director of Planning, Research and Statistics at the agency called for collective action from stakeholders to support the agency in order to improve healthcare services delivery in the state.
He advised that stakeholders work to expand and improve healthcare services delivery at the Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in order to bring healthcare services closer to the people.
Istifanus said that more than 70 percent of health challenges facing the people would be addressed if PHCs were performing optimally.
“Most of the health challenges facing the people were supposed to be handled by PHCs.
“However, the case is different because must of the primary facilities are not performing optimally as such the cases are being taken to secondary and tertiary health facilities,” he said.
