The Catholic Hospital at Krachi Nkwanta in the Volta Region has bemoaned the inability of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to pay for the medical bills of subscribers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) who patronise the services of the hospital.
According to the management of the hospital, the NHIA has been indebted to the health facility for about 12 months, crippling its operations.
The hospital’s suppliers have reportedly seized supplying medical items, including even basic items like hand gloves, because it is unable to pay its debt, apparently due to the fact government has not paid the facility for about a year now.
The administrator of the Krachi Nkwanta Catholic Hospital, Georgina Quayson, who made this known in an interview with DAILY GUIDE, said all efforts to get the NHIA to settle its indebtedness to the hospital have proven futile.
According to her, the last time the hospital received payment from government for NHIS services it provided to clients was in March 2016 and that even though the NHIA has not been able to pay the hospital, it has been able to promptly pay other hospitals in the area like the Krachi Nkwanta Government Hospital.
The development, she bemoaned, was badly affecting the operations of the hospital, calling on government to take urgent step to resolve the matter.
Being a Christian-owned hospital, she said, officials of the facility were restrained by their moral and religious principles to turn patients who go in for medical care at the hospital away because they are NHIS beneficiaries.
But she was quick to add that as the hospital tried its best to contribute to the health needs of residents within the area, government through the NHIS should also play its part by making prompt payment so that the hospital would be able to meet its obligations to its suppliers.
DAILY GUIDE has learnt that about 95 percent of the Catholic Hospital’s clients are beneficiaries of the NHIS, and thus it means apparently that a substantial amount of cash needed to ensure its continuous survival is expected from the central government through the payment of NHIS money.
 BY Melvin Tarlue