10 Months NHIS Arrears Starving New Tafo Hospital

There is a looming danger at the New Tafo Government Hospital in the East Akyem District of the Eastern Region of Ghana as the hospital is sitting on a time bomb awaiting imminent explosion.

A visit to the hospital reveals that the hospital is facing huge infrastructural challenge compelling the management of the hospital to use a room which can best be described as a cubicle as kids' ward housing several kids resulting in excessive overcrowding and bringing into question sanitation issues.

The hospital is also faced with manpower deficit as the number of nurses and midwives working at the hospital are woefully inadequate to handle the huge number of patients that throng the hospital daily.

Currently, the hospital has only one trained laboratory person, only 2pharmacists with no dispensary or pharmacy technician, a situation which the medical superintendent of the hospital Dr. Joseph Kojo Tambil describes as dire.

As if these challenges are not troubling enough, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) also owes the hospital over 10 months arrears. A situation which the medical superintendent says if not dealt with will compel them to cut some vital services.

According to Dr. Tambil, the hospital if not paid by NHIS will stop feeding inpatients in some few days time. He again added that this will be followed closely by letting patients who go to the hospital for surgery go with their own disinfectants. He added that if the situation is again not solved then the hospital will have no other choice than to cut dispensary services to patients on NHIS which means those patients will have to buy medicine prescribed to them by the hospital from outside.

According to Dr. Tambil, the New Tafo Government has over 90% of its clients on NHIS and failure by the scheme to pay their claims means starving the hospital to death.

The hospital authorities are therefore calling on the Eastern Regional minister to intervene and safe the hospital before the hospital collapses completely.

Whiles at the hospital, a supplier who has been supplying the hospital with some consumables had visited the hospital for her money and was negotiating with the hospital to increase the money by 10% since several months of the unpaid debt has made her also incur some debts from her borrowers.