K'Bu Performance review meeting underway

Accra, March 3, GNA - The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital on Tuesday said

though the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was the best in health care delivery, delays in reimbursement remained a major challenge. Speaking at the Annual Performance Review meeting in Accra, Professor Nii Otu Nortey, Chief Executive Officer of the Hospital said the total value of services rendered from 2006 to 2008 was 5, 35,829.98 Ghana Cedis out of which 3,933,391.56 have been paid to the hospital. He said 15,000 NHIS attendance was recorded in 2006, 64,000 in 2007 and 132,000 in 2008 in addition to the free maternal care that had increased the number of deliveries at Korle-Bu. He said the year under review saw the introduction of new methods of healthcare delivery and acquisition of equipment to facilitate and enhance service delivery to the growing number of patient who came to the hospital.

He mentioned the first kidney transplant on three patients by a team of Ghanaian and United Kingdom doctors and noted that the hospital was also building a local team to take over the essential surgical procedure. He said the hospital introduced an advanced method of treating prostrate cancer known as Brachytherapy which had minimal post-operative complications and noted it had been successful. Korle-Bu, he said, still continued to attract increasing number of patients and that it recorded a total number of 323,752 out-patient attendance in 2008 as against 277, 292 in 2007 and expressed worry about the increase in road traffic accidents in spite of the interventions from the relevant agencies. On infrastructure development, he said work on the medical block, new labour suites and the conversion of former offices for doctors at the department of child health into consulting rooms were near completion. He said the year 2008 began with the acquisition of chemistry analyzers to avoid total breakdown of analyzers, voltage regulators for the MRI/CT scan centre, and the networking of the hospital to facilitate communication between the Korle-Bu stores and the central medical department.

It also saw the introduction of telemedicine to share knowledge in patient management among hospitals in the country and abroad as well as engaging the services of the Merchant Bank for the collection of revenue at selected points to reduce revenue pilfering. On accommodation, he said currently over 800 staff of the hospital had been accommodated while 329 staff were on the estate unit waiting list for hospital accommodation instead of some of them travelling all the way from Tema and Nsawam.

He said management had written to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to release 20 per cent of the rent paid by staff for the renovation and maintenance of accommodation units. Management, he said had also embarked on of redevelopment of new accommodation which would be financed by the private sector. He said year 2009 will focus on referrals and tertiary services, improve the quality patient care and introduce programmes to promote regenerative health and behaviour change among clients. It would also focus on planned-preventive maintenance programme for hospital equipment and other properties and also review the financial management system. Replacement of old sewage lines, improvement on internal controls and capacity building at the Internal Audit Unit would be part of the revenue mobilization efforts. 3 March 09