Healthcare Providers, Managers kill BHIS in Bayelsa Over Poor Services To Patients

The Bayelsa Health Insurance Scheme (BHIS) undoubtedly and unarguably has failed its mandated to provide affordable, accessible and effective healthcare delivery in the state to its subscribers who are mostly Civil Servants and retirees whose salaries and pensions are deducted monthly to fund the programme.

This is despite the huge sum of money and projects provided by the government to enhance healthcare delivery to safeguard lives.

The Healthcare Providers under the scheme now demand money from enrollees of the scheme before proper treatment would be accorded to sick patients under the BHIS programme in Bayelsa state.

Many sick patients could no longer be attended or even if attended they were provided with shabby treatment that could not achieve a tangible result.

Presently, most of the healthcare providers are no longer honouring the passbook of BHIS in their respective hospitals, but if patients are lucky to be honoured, they will give preferential treatment to those not under the scheme before attending the BHIS patients whom they will demand payment of money before giving them better drugs and injections.

It is a truism that the programme in the real sense has failed already but just using media propaganda to cover its failure.

Just on Thursday, April 11, 2024 a mother under the scheme alleged that she went to Family Care Hospital with her four children suffering from severe scabies and malaria they were not giving attention until when they finally attended them,no better drugs and no injections were given to them, apart from few tablets that could not yield good result.

According to her she begged the Doctor on duty and the pharmacy to give them better treatment owing to the severity of the sickness but they were ask to pay money before such treatment.

She added that they were aware that the sickness (scabies and the malaria) is severe but all that they can give to them was just few tablets as shown here.

This is the Bayelsa Health Insurance Scheme (BHIS), the social security programme designed, where healthcare services of enrollees are paid from the common pool of funds contributed by participants in the scheme.

It is sad to note here that BHIS had failed in its mission to make health services available to all Bayelsans of all social and economic classes, through fair and equitable financing of healthcare cost, improving technical allocative efficiency, strengthening governance and accountability mechanisms, and a determine pursuit to achieve effective and qualitative health service delivery by providing regulatory oversight to all stakeholders in the value chain.

Indeed the BHIS services as it has been described is a nightmare as it fails the objective to provide quality healthcare without payment, provide and maintain accessible healthcare delivery system; and provide, promote and maintain affordable healthcare services.

The scenario if not urgently addressed will affect the lives of the people, and even claim lives especially under the current economic hardship facing the people.