NHIS recovers N2bn debts from HMOs

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has declared the sum of N2 billion as debts recovered from some Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), owed health care facilities across the country.

Pharmacist Mohammad Ghali, the NHIS General Manager, Enforcement Department, disclosed this during a stakeholders sensitization workshop held in Kano State on Tuesday, December 22.

Ghali said the NHIS had received various complaints from the health care providers over HMO’s non-payment of services rendered to enrollees and to that effect, the scheme came up with a debt drive and the principle of reconciliation between the HMO’s and healthcare facilities leading to the recovery of the monies.

“Over some period, what the NHIS witnessed before the coming of the new management led by Prof. Nasiru Sambo, there were lots of complaints coming from the healthcare providers.

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“And part of the complaints was that they were subjecting our enrollees to serious hardship. When you ask, they would say some other services that they rendered to the enrollees, the HMO did not pay. And this was coming to an unbearable level.

“So he (Sambo) now directed that the management, through the department, must take action. And that is why we came up with this principle of reconciliation whereby we collected all debts due to the health care facilities period of 2019.

“We invited the HMOs to meet with the healthcare facilities that were alleging that they were indebted to them. And they did the reconciliation between June and July 2020. As of September 2020, from our report from the states, about N2 billion have been recovered from the HMOs as payment that has now been done to the health care facilities.

“A letter of non-indebtedness is issued to any HMO that finishes clearing its debt. The exercise is still ongoing across the 36 states and FCT. Because there are some HMOs that are yet to complete the payment,” Ghali stated.

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