The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has busted two health centres and stripped them of their accreditations as NHIS agents for forging financial claims presented to the authority.
“Health insurance fraud is big business across the world. But we want to check it hard and discourage administrators of health centres, owners, etc, from such practice,” Chief Executive Officer of the NHIA, Dr Lydia Baaba Dsane-Selby said in an interview with state-owned Daily Graphic.
The name of the two facilities have been kept under wraps for now.
The NHIA boss credited the discovery of the fraud to the self-renewal subscription system introduced by the authority about a year ago.
The self-renewal process, allows the NHIS to prompt subscribers to confirm whether they have used a health facility making claims in their name.
In the case of the suspended two facilities, Dr Dsane-Selby said two subscribers denied ever visiting those facilities for two years.
The NHIA currently has 22 million people on its database, with 12.1 million active subscribers, and Dr Dsane-Selby said between 70 and 80 per cent of the scheme’s active membership had renewed their annual subscriptions via the mobile phone short code process.