May 30, 2022

The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) says its electronic platform named e-NHIA will be ready in June.

Alhaji Danzaria Ja’afaru, the Coordinator of NHIA in Kaduna State, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Monday.

The authority had in April 2021, announced plan to introduce an e-platform for registration, enrolment, change of facilities and other needs of its enrollees.

Ja’afaru disclosed that the installation of the e-platform has been concluded and would soon be uploaded online for people to download the application.

“With this development, enrollees do not have to visit any hospital or NHIA office to do business with the authority.

“In the comfort of your room, you can register with NHIA, make payment, change your facility and add your children to the scheme.

“You can also report health facilities or Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) if you are not satisfied with the quality of services being rendered.

“We have done the installation and everything is ready and will be launched in a month’s time. All you need to do is download the application and do all businesses with us,” he said.

He added that with this development, hospitals and HMOs must sit up otherwise they will not be doing business with NHIA.

The coordinator urged enrollees of the scheme to report to the authority whenever they were not satisfied with the quality of services rendered by any health facility.

“If people don’t report to us we will not be able to know the challenges and act, we will assume that everything is okay if we don’t receive any complaint from enrollees about a health facility or HMO.

“Just send in your complaint and we will be there the next day to investigate and take appropriate action,” the coordinator said.

Ja’afaru also advised enrollees to change their health facilities if not satisfied with the quality of services being rendered to them.

“If you move to another hospital, it will be a minus to that facility.

“This is because we are paying money to them on a quarterly basis on your behalf and the more people are leaving the facility, the less money they get from NHIA,” he said.

Ja’afaru said the authority carries out quarterly quality assurance visits to accredited health facilities and weekly snap-checks to assess the quality of services being rendered.

President Muhammadu Buhari had on May 19, signed into law the National Health Insurance Authority Bill 2022, which repealed the National Health Insurance Scheme Act. (NAN)