NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has seen “record” enrollment numbers in the National Health Insurance scheme since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, executives said yesterday, noting that in excess of 2,000 people are now being enrolled per month.
During a press conference to announce the launch of consultation of the scheme’s primary care transformation initiative, (PCTI) NHIA Managing Director Graham Whitmarsh said: “Today, during the pandemic we are actually seeing record levels of enrollment.
“It was slow at the beginning during the early lockdown, but subsequently enrollment has picked up.
“We are now enrolling in excess of 2,000 people a month without being proactive in our efforts.
“In fact, we have had to conduct a survey to find out why this is.”
To date, there are 87,371 registrants in NHI, 108 physicians, NHI Facilities on five islands covering beneficiaries across 17 islands, and seven labs across 13 locations supporting the scheme.
NHI Bahamas was launched in April 2017.
Whitmarsh also noted that by year’s end all of the nearly 90,000 NHI registrants will be on the electronic health record.
The electronic health record system eliminates the need for paper patient health records and acts as a single, central record of a patients’ health information.
According to Whitmarsh, the system also allows the NHIA to use anonymous data to determine what is happening with the health of the nation and make more informed decisions.
“The advantage of having a single record is that everyone is in the same system and we can access the data across the entire population. It gives us valuable information to make decisions [moving] forward. By the end of the year, all 90,000 registrants will be in the system,” said Whitmarsh.
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