The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A special fund will be established to cover ‘catastrophic care’ when the Government launches National Health Insurance’s (NHI) primary health care phase in April, a Cabinet Minister said yesterday.

Shane Gibson, minister of labour and National Insurance, said: “We plan to launch primary healthcare this year. When we launch primary healthcare, a special fund will be set up at that time the to assist with those persons who have catastrophic illnesses.”

He added: “The idea is to create a special fund to be able to assist individuals, when you identify illness beyond what primary health care would provide for. The idea right now is to start primary healthcare and get it off the ground. Once we are able to tweak it, then we will move on to the next phase.

The National Insurance Board (NIB) began its “enhanced” registration campaign for NHI yesterday via the new NIB smart card, which will be used as the primary tool for identifying persons teligible for NHI services.

Mr Gibson said that, to-date, just over 150,000 have received the new card.

“We have about 207,000 persons that we are targeting now to to have their cards in place, hopefully by the end of April,” he added.

“In a way to accommodate this, we have opened a number of new registration centres, and we announced that we have hired just over 130 persons who will assist with the data entry.”

Registration outlets in New Providence include the JL Centre on Blake Road; the South Beach Shopping Plaza; the Town Centre Mall; the Cotton Tree Plaza in Fox Hill; and St Barnabas Church on Wulff and Blue Hill Roads.