NHIS Warns Against Expired Drugs

Sylvester Mensah, CEO of the NHIA

Alfred Agamah, the Sunyani Municipal Manager of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), last Thursday cautioned health providers and pharmacists against administering expired drugs to patients.

He was addressing the first quarter performance review meeting of the scheme with stakeholders at Abesim.

Mr Agamah said some hospitals prescribed drugs that were not meant for particular diseases just to clear such drugs at their facilities, whilst some chemical shops also liaised with some health facilities to prescribe drugs on the verge of expiry.

He said frequent use of calcium carbonate to treat arthritis and hypertension should be avoided because it could damage the kidney since the drug was meant for the treatment of kidney-related ailments.

Mr Agamah stated that challenges that faced the scheme included treatment without diagnosis, wrong administration of drugs, inter-changing of diagnosis with medical procedures and insertion of drugs duplication of folders.

Other challenges were inappropriate records keeping, lack of patient data, no evidence of patient attendance and dating mismatch, he added.

Mr Agamah said the challenges contributed to delays in the payment of some claims of patients by the NHIS as well as complaints by some health providers about the reduction of their claims.

Such health providers, when invited by NHIS for redress, decline to honour such invitations and later accepted whatever claims were paid to them after thorough investigations, he stated.

Mr Agamah said NHIS was doing everything possible to increase client satisfaction by attending to their concerns promptly and accurately and that emergency centres had been created in some health facilities in the municipality to address issues, especially network problems.

He said pregnant women whose NHIS cards had expired were allowed to deliver at any health facility operating under the scheme since the free maternal care still existed