Managers of health institutions urged to be innovative

Dr Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyira, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has urged managers of public health facilities to be innovative and generate funds for the running of their facilities.

This, he said, would help the facilities cope with their financial burdens in the face of delays in payment of National Health Insurance(NHI) claims.

According to him, the delay in payment affects healthcare services and so managers should find innovative ways of supporting the running of health facilities to ensure that, patient’s access to quality health care is not affected.

The Director-General, who was speaking at the 2014 Annual Performance Review meeting of public health institutions in the Eastern Region, at Koforidua, noted that, reliance on the NHIS claims alone without any supportive venture would erode the objectives of the Ghana Health Service.

He said hospitals could run transport businesses and operate canteen services for the entire public, as a means to generate monies to support their core mandate of providing healthcare to people, adding that, ‘we cannot deny a patient service just because the NHIS claims had not been paid.

"Even in the face of that difficulty we have to work once we receive salary at the end of the month" he stated.

Dr Appiah-Denkyira indicated that, all over the world, private and public partnership have been found to be a critical tool to hasten development and therefore it was not out of place for the public health facilities to partner with the private sector to generate funds to run their facilities.

The theme for the meeting was "Improving maternal, neonatal and child survival rate- the impact of staff attitude," and was attended by all zonal, district and regional health management teams in the region.

Dr Charity Sarpong, the Eastern Regional Director of the GHS said, the focus of the region in 2015 is to increase access to health care services by promoting and creating Community-based Heath and Planning Services (CHPS) zones, in line with the vision of the GHS.

She said, currently, out of the 849 demarcated CHPS zones expected to be established in the region, according area size and population, 457 were functional, adding that, plans were far advanced to achieve the expected number.

Dr Sarpong noted that, even though negative staff attitude was a major factor inhibiting the achievement of some targets, "some of the challenges are beyond the health sector and we, therefore, need the collaborative effort of all stakeholders."

The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere, in a speech read on his behalf, said, poor attitudes and lack of professionalism in the health sector is a major concern that must be addressed and hoped that, the meeting would deliberate extensively on that issue to improve health care delivery in the region.