The Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf has stressed the need for collaboration between the NHIS, Galaxy Backbone and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in order to eliminate the ICT challenges of the Scheme and create a sustainable healthcare delivery system in the country.
He stated this during a courtesy visit to the headquarters of Galaxy Backbone, a leading ICT infrastructure and services provider, in Abuja.
Yusuf, who described communication as crucial to the operations of NHIS, expressed the commitment of the Scheme to taking advantage of every opportunity in the country to make things easy in that critical area of its business.
He hinted that the Scheme has been experiencing challenges in the areas of speed, accuracy and safety of its database, which are fundamental to effective registration and the administration components of its operations.
He further highlighted that the goal of the Scheme is to ensure that every enrolee is biometrically captured, with a National Identification Number (NIN) and NHIS number, adding that “the idea is to rid the health insurance system of ghost enrolees”.
This, he said, is particularly so as the agency requires to monitor and receive feedback from beneficiaries and service providers under its watch to be able to discharge creditably, its regulatory roles in the industry.
In his response, the Managing Director of Galaxy, Mr. Yusuf Kasari expressed delight at the interest of the NHIS to take its ICT Department to another level towards the global objective of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Kasari, according to a statement by Abba Zayyan, reiterated that the only way for the NHIS to ascertain the actual number of enrolees in the country is through biometric registration of the Scheme’s beneficiaries, adding that this will address the issue of multiplicity in the registration of enrolees.
