The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville announced the ministry’s plans to create a cashless system at public clinics.

“We believe by using the debit card we can ensure that revenue collection is at its maximum and, of course, there are always going to be cases where individuals do not have a debit card. We looked at the possibility (of signing) a memorandum of understanding or agreement with a company to provide these kiosks that you can access the debit card by placing the cash in and getting the debit card out and going to our counter and purchasing the services or medications,” he told reporters on Friday.

“For those individuals who may not, there will be a system in place, particularly in the initial stages once something like this is implemented for the transition phase. But most of the places you go around the world today and most of the hospitals very few people begin to take cash and we must look at modernising our system and have a better, more robust way of handling government revenue.”

Officials are in the final stages of reviewing the digital platform necessary to do it, according to Dr Darville.

“Once we make that determination then there will be an element of training where our accounts department needs to know exactly what needs to be done. When we get to that stage, we will make an announcement to the Bahamian people and then we will go to our trial run and an implementation phase.”

While speaking at a nurses symposium at SuperClubs Breezes, the minister also mentioned the integration of National Health Insurance in the public sector as he announced a potential launch for a pilot programme.

“As we speak, we have 138, maybe close to 140,000 members who are part of NHI who are able to access primary healthcare - they are able to do it through a private sector model and our clinics are not a part of what is going on,” he said.

“On coming to office, NHI has been mandated to ensure that we integrate our public clinics as part of the programme to ensure that individuals who have access to primary healthcare get some of that funding. So that we will be able to use that funding to keep our clinics up and going and to invest in our clinics.

“So we are about to launch a pilot programme whereby NHI now will give us the digital platform, as well as all of the components necessary to start the integration of our clinics into NHI and it’s so it would not be private sector driven. It will be private sector and public sector driven.

“So everyone in the public facility, including our nurses, get ready because we are going to integrate the accessibility for individuals who have NHI to utilise their cards in our clinics the ability to swipe the card and to be able to have resources go in a specific place into our healthcare system, public healthcare system, and not necessarily private.”