By Anne Azuka
The Director General Delta State Contributory Health Commission(DSCHC), Dr. Isaac Akpoveta has appealed to the healthcare providers to comply with the new insurance policy of the commission in handling patients for uptimal service delivery.
Dr. Akpoveta made the appeal in Asaba at a Stakeholders Engagement Session with Civil Servants on Sensitisation around recent updates within the Delta State Contributory Health Scheme(DSCHS).
Dr. Akpoveta who is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Commission disclosed that 2.6 million people have been enrolled in the scheme, noting that it’s the highest in the country.
According to Dr. Akpoveta, we have been going round to the whole state to talk to the Doctors, Nurses, health officers and everybody in the health sector on the need to brought on board, the new policy of the MORE agenda as it concerns the health insurance scheme.
He noted that labour is one of the greatest most serious stakeholder of the scheme.
He commended civil servants for their consistency in paying monthly contributions and praised the state government for its regular counterpart funding, both of which, he noted, sustain the scheme on a daily basis.
“You know that labour is represented in the board and therefore they must know what is going on. As far as their representative is informing them, it is good that I open up a new policy, the new direction and needs to be done to ensure that the scheme is well implemented and well received by the Civil servants.
“So today’s sensitisation is to enlighten the Civil servants on how this policy is being run, what we are doing to protect their interests to ensure that they receive the best of care.
DG DSCHC explained that they were not given enough attention before, adding that in the new policy the commission is putting into the system monitors that monitor the activities in the hospitals on how they attend to civil servants promptly and careful.
“We are also made to monitor at the hospital pharmacy to ensure that the doctors prescription reach out to the people and is well filled and they are not compromised.
“And to ensure that the attention is given to the civil servants as quickly as possible and make them be aware of what is covered and what is not covered.
“So that nobody will deceive them to pay money for what the policy has covered. We also let them know that if they are forced to pay money, they should keep the receipt and bring it to the Commission to enforce the system to refund money to them”, he stressed.
Dr. Akpoveta pointed out that the sensitisation enabled the commission to open up in the transparent way the health insurance should be run with the law to enable civil servants protect themselves and demand for their rights from the commission and from the service providers.
On the level of cooperation and compliance from the hospitals, he stated that” before they were not dispensing drugs to patients, but now the new policy has made to comply, so the policy is working perfectly because even the labour leaders have attested to it. 80 percent of our people are now receiving healthcare”.
He posited that the commission has nabbed a defaulting hospital that claimed it collected N450,000 for caesarian section from patient, saying “we are returning the money to the patient as well as sanction the doctor to pay a hundred thousand naira as punishment for doing that and if it repeats again, we strike off the name of the hospital”.
“If it is a government hospital, we deal with the Medical Director because we cannot remove the government hospital from the scheme but we can remove the doctor and the Commissioner will decide the remotest place to transfer him to.
“Sanction is going on, we have already finished compiling a lot of atrocities in the health system and we do it systematically by inviting them for fair hearing, thereafter we sanction those found wanting and very soon we will unveil them.
“To stop this, we are going to create a platform between the commission and the civil servants so that the complaints will come to us and we deal with the offenders real time”, Akpoveta concluded.
He listed the DSCHC new policy and implementation thrust-2025 to include Pre-registration of Under-5 and Pregnant Women, Service Delivery Monitors, Electronic Encounter systems, Bundle Payment reform and Upwards Review of Capitation.
Speaking in an interview, the Director of Administration and Human Resources of the commission, Comrade Bolum Martin Nwachukwu said a lot of innovations had taken place since Dr. Akpoveta become the DG in the commission.
” We are hear to sensitise the workers and share ideas with the labour leaders on the new policy of the commission and the way forward on their challenges since a lot of complaints come from them.
“It’s a beautiful outing because many things they never knew, they come to realise that we need to inform the people what the commission has put in place to ensure a smooth process”, he added.
