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 Mr Kweku Agyeman-Manu (right), the Minister of Health, congratulating the steering committee members after the inauguration ceremony
Mr Kweku Agyeman-Manu (right), the Minister of Health, congratulating the steering committee members after the inauguration ceremony

Minister inaugurates committees to develop cost-effective health system

The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has inaugurated two committees that will work at ensuring cost-effectiveness in the use of resources in the health sector.

The committees are to implement a national Health Technology Assessment (HTA) agenda aimed at informing decisions on cost-effectiveness in health by prioritising limited health budgets to optimise resource allocation to achieve value-for-money.

The committees are a 15-member National Steering Committee, with representatives from both the public and private sectors and development partners that would set a HTA agenda for the country, and provide the overall governance for the process and a National Technical Committee, which on the other hand, will work at developing the HTA for the country.

Cost-effectiveness

Mr Agyeman-Manu said the main purpose of the HTA was to inform policy decision mechanism on spending in the health sector, saying institutionalising the HTA in Ghana sought to ensure that policy decisions at all levels of the health system are based on evidence and such evidence include evidence from the HTA.

According to him, the HTA had not been well developed in the country, although the selection of essential medicines were being done in a relatively systematic way, it was not informed by the HTA.

He said there was, therefore, the need to use the HTA to bridge the gaps in identifying the most cost-effective diagnostic, preventive and curative interventions on vaccines, medicines, screening and preventive programmes.

He added that Ghana had positioned herself to institutionalise the HTA as part of the policy processes to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as it impacted key decisions such as selection, reimbursement, pricing and procurement.

“In this regard, the policy direction of the Ministry of Health on the HTA is to establish a steering committee and technical expertise for the HTA to meet system demands; establish protocols for benchmarking for the development and use of HTA,” he said.

The committees, he added, would facilitate the application of the HTA to evidence-informed context-based decisions on health technologies, as well as institutionalise the HTA in such a manner as to optimise its uptake in all relevant institutions.

Financial constraints

The Director of Administration, Ministry of Health (MOH), Mr Hamidu Adakurugu, said it was a fact that most healthcare decisions were often taken within a context of striving to achieve efficiency amidst financial constraints.

The HTA, he said, was an evidence-based process that sought to examine the consequences of using a particular health technology by considering the real impacts be it social, medical, economic or ethnic.

“There is the need to achieve value for money in our healthcare system, while taking into account the peculiar needs and preferences of our patients,” he said.

He said the MOH was currently piloting the use of the HTA to inform decisions on prioritisation of cost containment and sustainability strategies of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA).

He added that the HTA was being applied to the selection of medicines in the National Essential Medicines List and the development of Standard Treatment Guidelines for recommended therapies such as hypertension which was a major chronic condition.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of the NHIA, Dr Lydia Dsane-Selby, welcomed the adoption of the HTA as an effective tool to ensuring long-term financial sustainability for the scheme, with the use of scientific evidence to make decisions to achieve Universal Health Coverage.

She called for stakeholder support in the mobilisation of domestic funding for health care.

The WHO Country Representative, Dr Owen Kaluwa, commended Ghana as one of the countries that was striving to achieving UHC.

He, however, called for enhanced mobilisation of domestic funding to sustain healthcare financing.

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