Abuja – Dr Lekan Ewenla, the Medical Director, Ultimate Health Management Services, a registered Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO), has called for the adoption of customised health insurance products to boost compliance of enrolees.
Ewenla told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja that the major concern of the HMOs was a systematic expansion of health insurance to the citizenry.
According to him, compliance of enrolees to health insurance programmes has not recorded a boost since the inception of National Health Insurance Scheme in 2005.
“Our major concern is the systematic expansion of health to every Nigerians.
“Since NHIS was launched in 2005, we have not really had any appreciable improvement in the volume of enrolment.
“We have looked at the reasons why that was happening and we saw that all that was required especially the law establishing the scheme does not make the scheme compulsory for now.
“We still strongly believe that with the adoption of customised healthcare packages, there will be reasonable compliance in the level of enrolment and engage more people,” he said.
He stated that health insurance programme was designed to cover everybody in the country.
The managing director said that the organisation had developed products that could accommodate some sector of the society to key into health insurance programmes.
Ewenla stated that the products were expected to be adopted by the NHIS before it could be launched for enrolees.
“What we have done in the past is to develop customised healthcare packages and summit such to the National Health Insurance Scheme, who is the regulator of the scheme for adoption.
“When such programmes are adopted by the NHIS, it becomes a must buy for the target industry,” he said.
He recalled that HMOs developed the Tertiary Institutions Social Health Insurance Programme (TSHIP) for tertiary institutions in the year 2006, which was adopted but yet to receive full compliance.
In addition, he said they developed a product for the Private Primary Schools (PPS) that would ensure that pupils had access to quality healthcare in school while they pay a certain amount as premium for sustenance.
According to him, the PPS health insurance product will require endorsement from the Federal Ministries of Education and Health as well as the World Health Organisation.
Ewenla said the products they developed included the Private Security outfit which was referred to as Medi-Guard and involved collaboration with the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps as the regulatory body.
He stated that if adopted, more than 10 million private security guards would be captured in health insurance programme.
However, the managing director noted that adoption of health insurance products would not be complete without the targeted enrolees keying into the programmes.
The officer explained that the development of the products was based on research and evaluation of the target prospective enrolees.
“The beauty of the product is that they are research based, we have looked at the disease burden in these targeted industries and their economic indices, the lifestyle of the targeted market.
“Even if they have routine hospitals for healthcare in their offices, when they are not on duty and they have health challenges, how do they cope?
“We hope the products will be adopted in the near future.
“We know that the only way to expand health insurance in this country is to adopt these customised products while those they are designed for have access to it,” he said.
He also noted that compliance by the citizenry was vital for the accommodation of enrolees into health insurance programmes.
According to him, the country has all the laws to ensure that compliance and enforcement of health insurance programme was embraced by the citizenry. (NAN)