The Executive Director of Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), Mr. Peter Yeboah, has stressed on the need for health workers to ensure patients’ safety at all times through the adoption of the appropriate modern health technologies.
He added that Christian health workers are obliged to provide safe, effective and efficient health services at all times in fulfillment of Christ healing ministry. Mr. Yeboah said, as health professionals, there was the need to carefully use the appropriate tools, devices and equipment to ensure diagnostic accuracy and enhance medication safety, both of which were critical to improving effective health care.
The Executive Director of CHAG, who was addressing the opening of the 13th Annual National Conference of the Catholic Health Service at Sokode-Lokoe in the Ho Municipality, pointed out that the current spate of legal suits and judicial claims against some CHAG hospitals for cases of malpractice, medication and surgical errors and treatment delays, among others, highlighted the need to make patient safety the centre-piece of health provision.
“We need to ensure avoidable deaths, diseases, discomfort and disabilities in our health facilities, because our Christian hospitals and clinics must serve as places of comfort, hope, restoration, protection and fulfillment for the human person,” he stressed.
Mr. Yeboah noted that the adoption of modern health technologies could potentially improve access to healthcare, improve patient safety, and ultimately enhance clinical outcomes and cost effectiveness, saying the theme for the conference, “Patient Safety and Modern Health Technologies,” was very timely, and in line with CHAG’s vision of excellence and creativity in service provision.
He said CHAG needed dedicated professional health workers, who would be compassionate and charitable in the provision of healthcare, stressing that the capitation payment being introduced by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) offers potentials and challenges to all CHAG facilities.
Mr. Yeboah explained that under capitation, patients would choose their preferred primary providers, upon which a calculated amount of payment would be made to service providers based on the number of registered clients, and the more people register with a facility, the more financial benefit it would be derive, therefore, the ability to attract and retain clients would be a challenge.
The Catholic Bishop responsible for Health, Most Rev. Joseph Afrifa-Agyekum, said the church’s teachings on life and the dignity of the human being have been invaded by technological advancements in health care provision, such as life support systems, saying as much as the church abhors euthanasia, it also abhors life support interventions with medical technologies that end up prolonging pain and suffering.
He expressed concern about the manner the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was bringing hardships to the facilities, which, he stressed, was affecting the ability to provide care more effectively.
He further noted that the NHIS had the potential to collapse health institutions, and that the church was finding an appropriate and long lasting solution to the issue of non-payment to providers, but in the meantime, the problem, he said, had worsened.
Most Rev. Bishop Afrifah-Agyekum, who is also the Bishop of Koforidua, said it was very disheartening that it had become the habit of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to only pay a percentage of the total bill submitted, and create the impression that it had finished paying the facility.
He threatened that the facilities would be considering taken legal action against the scheme’s management in the near future, if this negative situation continued. He observed that the NHIA had the constitutional mandate to pay service providers regularly because clients have the legal right to enjoy the services of the facilities, since they had earlier paid their premiums and taxes for the service to be rendered.
He called on the government to play its part in the relationship with the health facilities, because what was due them was a right and not a privilege. Most Rev. Bishop Afrifah-Agyekum said the recent change in the law, which has brought a condition that all health facilities must register as corporate entities in order to receive a license to provide care, only the mission sector facilities were bearing the brunt of it, because almost all the health institutions were only issued with provisional licenses until they meet certain conditions, a situation, he said, which ought to be looked at again.