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Health
institutions in Volta Region to be Peer Reviewed
Ho, July 18, Ghanadot/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.
GNA
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