The Nasarawa State Health Insurance Agency (NASHIA) has threatened to delist any medical facility that is found wanting in quality health service delivery.
Dr Yahaya Ubam, Executive Secretary (ES) of the agency made the threat at an event to commemorate 2023 ‘Universal Health Coverage Day on Tuesday in Lafia.
He said any facility that is found wanting would be delisted and thier enrolling transfer to any nearest facility to enable them to continue to access healthcare.
The Executive Secretary was represented at the programme by Pharm. Maikudu Kaki, Director, Medical Services, Standard and Quality Control at the agency.
He called on healthcare providers to be professional in thier conduct and give thier enrolling the desired services in order to increase confidence of the people in the scheme.
He added that the agency has received a lot complaints from enrolling about bad services by some medical facilities and they are taken steps to address them.
He also advised enrolling to change any service provider that fail to satisfy them to another one as it is within their rights to do so.
The ES also said that the agency has concluded plans to ensure that all the state and local government civil servants enroll in the scheme.
“All the staff of the tertiary institutions, judiciary, house of assembly including students of the tertiary institutions will be made to enroll in the next few months.
“The law establishing the agency had made it mandatory for all civil servants in the state to enroll in the scheme and we will enforce that to achieve universal health coverage” he added.
Bawa-Ubam further explained that the agency had set a target to itself to register 500, 000 persons into the scheme by 2027.
“To achieve this therefore, we most explore all avenues to create robust awareness and make registration simplest for everybody.
“We will create a platform where people can enroll in the comfort of thier homes and offices once they have android phones and have access to the internet,” he added.
He added that over 237, 000 persons have enrolled into the scheme currently and are benefiting from the quality out-of-pocket healthcare services.
He added that the beneficiaries were registered under different packages such as public sector, informal sector, vulnerable and students among others.
In his presentation, Dr. Simon Istifanus, Director of Planning, Research and Statistics at the agency called on stakeholders to collectively take actions to support the agency in order to improve healthcare services delivery in the state.
He explained that all hands must be on deck to expand and improve healthcare services delivery at the Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in order to bring health services closer to the people.
He added that more than 70 per cent of health challenges facing the people would be addressed if PHCs are performing optimally.
“Most of the health challenges facing the people are those that were supposed to be handled by PHCs.
“It is because must of the primary facilities are not performing optimally that the cases are being taken to secondary and tertiary health facilities,” he added.
The theme of the 2023 Universal Health Coverage Day is ‘Health for All, Time for Action’. (NAN).