Health institutions in Volta Region to be Peer Reviewed

Ho, July 18, GNA- Public Sector Health Institutions in the Volta Region are to be Peer Reviewed periodically. This is to ensure continuous quality service delivery and improvement in their aesthetic environments. The Volta Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Andrew Arde-Acquah announced this at the end of a self-initiated peer review session of the Ho Municipal Hospital on Thursday. Dr Arde-Acquah said health delivery institutions could not afford to compromise on "quality of care and customer satisfaction" through continuous quality improvement, a standard which peer reviewing has proved to ensure. He said the entire health sector is judged by the quality of clinical care it provides, hence the need to always find ways of improving on quality in that area.

The Central Regional Deputy Director of Pharmaceutical Services of the GHS, Mr Ananga Yamyolia, who shared the Region's experiences and results from peer reviewing, said the dramatic transformation of the "Kasoa Clinic" from a chaotic situation was just one example of what the region has to show for adopting peer review of its health institutions. He said peer review helps boost the morale of staff who are delighted to see quick improvement in their work environment, it also ensures cost effectiveness in a situation where resources for monitoring and supervision are limited, monitoring and supervision are conducted by peers of the host institution and thus removes the element of fear and supervision.

Other benefits include the sharing of experiences and lessons and participants, the methodology provides feedback to the whole staff in a durbar thereby allowing for wider participation. Mr Yamyolia said the peer review approach also ensures that good practices are quickly picked, criticisms by peers are quickly and readily accepted and healthy competition engendered. He said peer review in the GHS also posed resource constraints because issues raised on such forums require regional and national interventions such as staffing, equipment and infrastructure to be able to effect the improvements required.

The Ho Municipal Medical Superintendent, Dr Kofi Gafatsi Normanyo said the Hospital's management decided to undertake the exercise because of the tremendous improvements it brought to health institutions in the Central Region. In response to issues raised in the review, he said financial constraints and lack of maintenance, and renovation of the 83 year-old hospital posed very serious challenges to quality of care it offers to patients. He said as a result of very serious financial constraints the focus of the management was to channel resources into areas that have the potential to generate income to be able to tackle non-income generating aspects of its operations. Participants suggested that fees charged by the public sector health institutions under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) should appreciate considerably to enable those institutions improve on facilities that promote quality delivery. They were of the view that unless that was done public health institutions would soon lose their clients to the private health institutions whose fees are much higher than those in the public sector.