Assessment of the impact of Delayed Reimbursement by the National Health Insurance Scheme on the Supply Chain Management of St. Dominic Hospital, Akwatia, Ghana

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DOI: 10.21522/TIJMG.2015.06.02.Art013

Authors : Ebenezer Kenneth Abban

Abstract:

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a major social intervention program ever initiated, implemented and championed by the Government of Ghana in its quest to achieving universal health coverage for all the citizenry. Although a beautiful and highly acclaimed and acceptable scheme by many, the implementation of its payment regime of reimbursable claims to service providers is fraught with several challenges of which delayed reimbursement of submitted claims to health service providers is a major one. It is assumed that this anomaly disrupts the supply chain management of service providers with some consequential results in general service output of the latter viz; availability of prescribed medicines, surgical and medical consumables, patient waiting time and medical and surgical equipment. Employing descriptive and inferential statistics in a cross-sectional study with the problem statement, variable assessment, instrument development, method of data collection (primary and secondary), data analysis and report writing well captured, the researcher concludes that there is some amount of truth that truly delayed reimbursement by the NHIS has some consequential results on the general service output of healthcare providers and therefore recommends prompt payment of submitted claims by the NHIS.

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