Private health care facilities are threatening to stop providing services in part

Frank-Torblu Richard, the General Secretary of the Ghana Private Health Facilities Association, has welcomed efforts for the National Health Insurance Scheme to be decentralized (NHIS).

Due to the centralized system, he told Alfred Ocansey on the 3FM Sunrise Morning Show on Tuesday that there have been issues with the government paying capitation to private health facilities for their services to the scheme.

Frank-Torbu highlighted his dissatisfaction with the NHIS’s pricing structure for medicines and services once more.

“We acquire our drugs at market prices, but the government requires us to sell them at a set price.” The government is supposed to make it easier for us to get medications, but that hasn’t happened,” he stated.

Unlike government medical facilities, which buy directly from central or regional medical stores, private health care providers buy on the open market or pay cash at the central store.

The Ghana Private Health Facilities Association has warned that some of their services will be withdrawn. As a result, they will no longer sell generic pharmaceuticals that are on the NHIS drug list.

“In order for us to stay in business, rather than stocking the generic drugs on the NHIS list, we will stock the branded ones and sell them to patients at market pricing, and nothing prevents us from doing so.” “The government has become indifferent to the predicament of private health-care facilities,” Frank-Torbu stated again.

“The government should send some of its professional medical officers to us,” says the author. We are willing to meet the government halfway, even if it means paying a portion of their salaries,” Frank-Torbu said.

“Most hospitals will have to downsize their operations to clinics,” he warned, “since the quality and quantity of health workers required to run our facilities are not available as they choose better pastures.”