By Hassan Zaggi
The Federal Government has assured that the payment of reimbursement to service providers under the National Emergency Services Ambulance System (NEMSAS) will be direct devoid of any intermediary.
This is to allay the fears in some quarters that Health Management Organisations (HMOs) will frustrate the process by refusing to reimburse the service providers under the scheme at the right time.
The National Coordinator of the NEMSAS, Dr. Saidu Ahmed disclosed this at a media briefing in Abuja, Monday.
It would be recalled that the HMOs have been having running battle with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in recent times over lack of the payment of monies to service providers under the scheme at the right time.
“The payment of NEMSAS is independent of NHIS. We are only making use of their ICT platform to ensure transparency so that any person sitting in his room can monitor the flow of money and how it gets to the service providers. There is transparency in the process. We are only given 48 hours, after that, if the person is an NHIS enrollee then the NHIS will take over from there. NEMSAS is independent of HMOs at the moment,” he said.
He explained that the NEMSAS programme was aimed at ensuring that emergency medical care is available when and where it is required irrespective of ability to pay.
Ahmed, however, disclosed that the NEMSAS programme would, next week, sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), the NHIS and the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) in an effort to improve it services.
Speaking, the Executive Secretary of the NHIS, Prof. Mohammed Nasir Sambo, corroborated that his Scheme would only assist NEMSAS with the needed platform to make payment in a transparent and seemless manner, noting that no HMOs will be involved in the payment of the NEMSAS service providers.
“The reimbursement under National Emergency Medical Services is not under the NHIS. The NEMSAS is using the platform of the NHIS to make payment seemless.
“The question of HMOs not reimbursing will not even arise. The payment is going to be done without any intermediary,” he noted.
Prof. Sambo, however, reiterated that his Scheme is working hard to address all complaints raise by enrollees of the scheme.
While acknowledging that there are pockets of complaints by enrollees of the Scheme, he said: “If you say people are complaining, it is normal. If they do, we are, on our part as a responsible Scheme finding ways of addressing their complaints.
“Some of the complaint that come from enrollees are coming purely from lack of understanding of the NHIS processes.”
