Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Lydia Dsane-Selby, has bemoaned the incessant increment in the prices of drugs in the country.
Speaking in a webinar organized by the Ghana National Chamber of Pharmacy, Mrs Dsane-Selby, opined that escalations in drug prices undermine and will eventually render the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) unsustainable.
“Prices of medicines in the country continue to escalate and this makes the scheme unsustainable,” she said.
“Medicine prices are running higher than the country’s inflation and we have to address it because the control of drug prices in Ghana is very poor,” she added.
Mrs Dsane-Selby’s assertion of escalating drug prices proves true as the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that Ghana has one of the highest prices of medicine in the world.
Government, through the NHIS bears the cost of drugs prescribed by pharmacists and doctors to Ghanaians registered under the scheme.
Service providers under the scheme – mainly hospitals and pharmacies – have often complained bitterly about the late payment and in some cases the non-payment of monies owed them for drugs prescribed to patients registered under the scheme.
A situation which could partly be ascribed to the high prices of drugs submitted to government for payment.
On the issue of late payment of monies to pharmacies registered as service providers under the scheme, Mrs Dsane-Selby stated that, late payment of monies by government to service providers is due to the late submission of claims.
“Most pharmacies take like 3 months before making submission of claims and payment of claims to pharmacies also usually take 3 months, so that creates a 6 months gap, so early submission of claims promotes quick payments of claims,” she stated.
Speaking further, Mrs Dsane-Selby, shockingly revealed that out of some 4,291 pharmacies located across the country, only 145 pharmacies have registered with the NHIA as service providers under the scheme.
The scheme, she also pointed out, currently covers 23.5 million Ghanaians, representing 78.4 percent of the total population.
