Inaugurate NHIS Governing Council to check corruption, HMCAN tells FG

To check corruption in the National Health Insurance Scheme( NHIS) and abuse of office by its Executive Secretary, Health and Managed Care Association of Nigeria (HMCAN), a body of accredited Health Management Organisations (HMO) in the country, has asked the Federal Government as a matter of urgency to inaugurate the Governing Council of the scheme.

The association said having a governing council in place was not only critical to tackling corruption which it said led to the recent suspension of the Executive Secretary of the scheme, Prof. Usman Yusuf, but would significantly help in proper policy formulation, implementation, checks and balances and to also ensure that the scheme worked within the dictate of the law.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, had three weeks ago suspended Yusuf and set up a panel to probe allegations of corruption against him.

Speaking at a press briefing in Lagos recently, Chairman of HMCAN, Dr Tunde Ladele, who made the appeal, said inaugurating a governing council of NHIS which he described as a short term solution was among the six fundamental solutions that HMCAN had proffered which the Federal Government required for the growth of health insurance and the attainment of universal health coverage in Nigeria.

Apart from inaugurating the governing council, Ladele also urged the Federal Government to standardise the process of recruitment and appointment of the leadership of the agency in order to test and confirm the intellectual capability and compatibility of whoever that is coming to regulate the scheme.
“This is to ensure that a round peck is unfixed into a round hole”, he added.

As a medium term solution, HMCAN called on the leadership of NHIS to create a robust software and platform in collaboration with HMOs for seamless coordination and monitoring of all disbursement by the HMOs as suggested by stakeholders in 2005.

For the long term solution, Ladele said: “The existing law, the Act 35 of 1999 should be reviewed to change the name of NHIS to National Health Insurance Commission(NHIC), strictly for a regulation.”

He went on: ” The health insurance scheme should be made mandatory for all Nigerians. The federal government should create a National Health fund agency to handle the managing of public sector health insurance scheme with other schemes like the scheme for vulnerable groups in the country.”

In his remarks, National Publicity Secretary, HMCAN, Mr. Lekan Ewenla, said the Federal Government must remove the NHIS as the managers of the scheme’s fund and establish a National Health Commission to manage it as was the case in the telecommunication industry.

“Government needs to take health sector appointments off the political radar and stop playing politics with the health of Nigerians. Government should do interviews with experts on the field and listen to professional recommendations before choosing a head for the scheme”, he said.

According to Ewenla, the suspended NHIS boss ran the scheme like his private enterprise as a result of what he described as poverty of knowledge, adding that many of the issues were not clear to him.

“He was going to remove HMOs and focus on paying hospitals instead of regulating the scheme”, he noted.