PPP: Could it revolutionalise Ghana's NHIS?

By Kofi Thompson
The need to find a healthcare facility easy to access from McCarthy Hill, led to my opting to go to the Finney Hospital at New Bortianor (mile 11 junction).
I was able to see a medical doctor within 15 minutes of my arrival at the hospital.
Whiles waiting to see the doctor, I wondered how a creative way could be found, to make it possible for the insurance industry in Ghana to work with private medical practitioners, to design insurance packages that could make it possible for such private healthcare facilities, to be accessed by all Ghanaians, irrespective of their financial background.
Perhaps the public-sector healthcare system could also learn lessons from successful private hospitals such as the Finney Hospital.
Assuming it were a practical proposition, one wonders what the outcome would have been, if the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) had been outsourced to the insurance industry, to design and operate as a public private partnership undertaking.
Applied to it, could the PPP concept revolutionalise Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme - relieving taxpayers of the burden of paying for the expensive bureaucracy that runs it: by shifting it to the insurance industry?
Perhaps it would make it possible to devote the money saved in such a move to improving public healthcare facilities across Ghana - and make them as efficient and user-friendly as private-sector hospitals like the Finney Hospital.

By Kofi Thompson
The need to find a healthcare facility easy to access from McCarthy Hill, led to my opting to go to the Finney Hospital at New Bortianor (mile 11 junction).
I was able to see a medical doctor within 15 minutes of my arrival at the hospital.
Whiles waiting to see the doctor, I wondered how a creative way could be found, to make it possible for the insurance industry in Ghana to work with private medical practitioners, to design insurance packages that could make it possible for such private healthcare facilities, to be accessed by all Ghanaians, irrespective of their financial background.
Perhaps the public-sector healthcare system could also learn lessons from successful private hospitals such as the Finney Hospital.
Assuming it were a practical proposition, one wonders what the outcome would have been, if the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) had been outsourced to the insurance industry, to design and operate as a public private partnership undertaking.
Applied to it, could the PPP concept revolutionalise Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme - relieving taxpayers of the burden of paying for the expensive bureaucracy that runs it: by shifting it to the insurance industry?
Perhaps it would make it possible to devote the money saved in such a move to improving public healthcare facilities across Ghana - and make them as efficient and user-friendly as private-sector hospitals like the Finney Hospital.