Ghana’s National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) Consortium for Global Health jointly organized a five-day technical exchange training in Accra, on January 27, 2024.
The week-long training which highlighted strategic purchasing, financing and tariff generation, was spearheaded by the NHIA Strategic Health Purchasing Directorate, (SHPD).
Aimed at strengthening the approach to Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the Ag. Director of SHPD, Dr. Ruby Mensah Annan (Mrs.) at the opening ceremony lauded the joint exercise.
She emphasized that the training sought to leverage the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) Consortium for Global Health expertise to improve Ghana’s NHIS strategic financing, capacity building, and data analytics.
“The training is expected to address challenges with the implementation of strategic health purchasing arrangements while institutionalizing a system to collect service cost data seamlessly from providers. It is to also have a source of standardized cost data of consumables and simplifying the costing and computation of tariffs process.”
A Manager with the SPHD, Mr. Habakkuk Mwibzeele-Apuko Tarezina in a presentation gave an interview of the Directorate’s tariff generation, the challenges and opportunities essential in addressing Ghana’s healthcare delivery.
The Deputy Director of Efficiency and Productivity Insight of the UK NHS, Paul Healy highlighted the organization’s strategic financing, accountability and structure.
“There is also a balance between the national and local dimension, which is mostly based on what needs to be held centrally and what can be best managed closer to populations.”
The participants shared ideas and presented solutions to the identified problems realized during group discussions.
From the NHIA, the participants included the Director of Claims, Mrs. Abigail Nyarko Cudjoe Boakye-Kwarteng, Director of Actuarial Directorate, Mr. Magnus Owusu-Agyemang, the Ag. Director for Management Information Systems Directorate, Mr. Daniel Blankson, the Ag. Director of Corporate Affairs, Mr. Oswald Essuah-Mensah, the Deputy Director, SHPD, Mrs. Augustina Nortey and other staff members.
The UK NHS Consortium for Global Health Consortium was represented by a Senior Health Systems Advisor, Emily Carey, Lethiwe Choga, Senior Finance Lead, NHS England, Dr. Jonas Abraham Akuffo, Head of Payment Production, NHS England, and Pearl Olukayode, Partnership and Project Manager, NHS Consortium for Global Health.
