The Executive Secretary of Osun Health Insurance Agency, Rasaq Akindele, has disclosed plan by the agency to extend its free health insurance scheme to pregnant women and persons with disabilities in the state.
Already, Akindele said no fewer than 23,000 pensioners in the state have been enrolled into its totally free health scheme intervention as directed by the state governor, Ademola Adeleke.
He noted that once Adeleke approves its current proposal, all pregnant women and PWDs would start enjoying free medical care across the state.
“Just like the pensioners, we are currently looking at how pregnant women in Osun will have free health insurance. We are also targeting the PWDs and once we receive approval from Mr Governor, we will start capturing them into the free scheme,” Akindele said on Thursday while addressing members of the Osun NUJ Correspondents Chapel in Osogbo.
He said when he took over administration of OSHIA last year, only about 4,000 enrollees were under the Osun State Insurance Scheme, adding that after consistent and aggressive campaign, over 13,000 residents of the state from the informal sector has now been captured in the scheme.
Noting that Osun has the lowest premium of N12,066 in the country, Akindele revealed that the agency targets to have 1 million enrollees in the next one year.
According to him, the agency increased the capitation of the health providers and also expended about N300 million in purchasing medical equipment to public hospitals in order to strengthen the capacity of the healthcare providers to deliver qualitative services to its enrollees.
The Executive Secretary further disclosed that the agency currently has over 257,000 enrollees with 244,000 from the formal sector and 13,462 from the informal sector.
He pointed out that one of the major challenges the agency is low uptake in the informal sector, adding that it took his team vigorous campaign to improve 4,000 enrollees he met to over 13,000.
“The scheme covers both medical and surgical cases. Any form of orthopedic cases are also covered but total limb replacement is not covered.
“We have digitalized our system and it is fully automated. There is an app we designed that people can easily register for OHIS without coming to our office.
“By increasing capitation of our service providers, we have it comfortable for them to be providing services to our enrollees. The coverage should be for everybody in the state and that is why we increased tariff and scope.
“One major challenge we have is the knowledge of our people to this scheme. Despite our campaign, most people still don’t understand the benefit of this scheme. It is an insurance policy which is contributing into a fund to be disbursed. We will keep educating people because it is not good enough to have about 5.5 million inhabitants in Osun and over 5 million people are not covered by the insurance scheme,” he stated.
