Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Healthcare and Social Security Agency's (BPJS Kesehatan's) President Director, Ali Ghufron Mukti, encouraged stakeholders to preserve continuation of the National Health Insurance and Healthy Indonesia Card (JKN-KIS) Program to streamline Indonesia's health system.

The preservation of this program should be our collective goal to provide health assurance for all of Indonesians, Mukti noted in a written statement received here on Thursday.

Continuation of the JKN-KIS Program can have a positive impact in various sectors, such as by increasing life expectancy by 2.1 years, he pointed out.

The program additionally improved access to health services for outpatients by 3.60 percent and for inpatients by 3.20 percent in 2019, the president director noted.

The current JKN-KIS Program has also been widely utilized for financing health services in Indonesia, he stated.

By utilizing this program, the number of patients visiting health facilities continues to increase. Ever since JKN-KIS has been implemented from 2014 to 2020, it had been utilized more than 1.3 billion times, he remarked.

In 2014, the number of new visits were only recorded at 92.3 million, though it has continued to rise to 224.7 million sick visits at health facilities or 615,616 visits per calendar day in 2020, he noted.

Mukti admitted to certain challenges encountered in implementing the JKN-KIS Program. However, synergistic efforts of stakeholders could consistently yield good results and improve each sector.

BPJS Kesehatan also makes an effort to collaborate with the regional government to incorporate the regional health insurance scheme into the JKN-KIS Program to increase the scope of the program's membership, he noted.

BPJS Kesehatan had also expanded the JKN-KIS member registration channel for people through inside and outside network registration, he added.

Allowing easier access to register as JKN-KIS members is expected to encourage people to register as the program's member, he affirmed.

This will help expedite efforts to achieve the membership target of 98 percent of Indonesians in accordance with the National Mid-term Development Plan (RPJMN), he noted.

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Translator: Martha S, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Sri Haryati
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