New medical centre inaugurated
A new hospital, Healthnet Airport Medical Centre, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities has been inaugurated in Accra.
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According to the management of the centre, Healthnet is committed to offering high class services and carrying out a wide range of investigations on patients’ conditions for the right treatment.
Inaugurating the hospital, the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Cardiothoracic Centre, Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, said Ghana needed about 45,000 medical doctors more to meet the health needs of its citizens as it worked to consolidate its middle income status.
He said currently there were about 2,700 doctors in the health care system who were taking care of 25 million Ghanaians, and although the nation needed more doctors, it could not train more due to financial constraints.
He said the country’s medical schools churned out 450 doctors every year and that showed that it would take the country 100 years to be able to train doctors to meet modern trends.
According to him, the country also needs more health facilities to meet the health needs of the people and that cannot be done by the government alone.
He, therefore, called on the private sector to invest in healthcare delivery in the country to complement the efforts of the government.
Prof. Boateng said Ghana spent close to five per cent of its Gross Domestic Product on health care and was ranked 167th in the world in relation to that, describing the development as “not good enough.”
On life expectancy, he said Ghana ranked 148th on the human development index in education and health care, saying, “Something is wrong.”
He commended the management and staff of the new hospital for their commitment to the development of the health delivery system in Ghana.
International standards
The Clinical Consultant of Healthnet, Dr Harold Ayetey, said the centre would strive to deliver quality services that met international standards to both Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians.
He said the centre would serve as a research hub and the treatment of patients would be based on evidence produced from detailed investigations conducted on their conditions using contemporary equipment.
Dr Ayetey, who is also the Head of Internal Medicine, University of Cape Coast Medical School, said quality service and cost effectiveness would be the hallmark of the medical centre, adding that treatment would be patient-centred, while effective communication and efficient health services would be provided to enhance patient’s satisfaction.
He stated that the hospital was supported by a well-equipped state-of-the-art diagnostics and medical imaging equipment, as well as the requisite technology and also had the capacity for minimally invasive diagnostic procedures such as endoscopy and prostate biopsies.
Walk-in diagnostic services
Clients may also walk in with diagnostic requests from other healthcare providers to avail themselves of the state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment and the professionals at Healthnet.
He indicated that health care must be paid for to ensure the best possible care for patients and added that the new facility would provide financing and health care in one package.
The Chairman of the Nationwide Mutual Healthcare, Mr Harold Awuah Darko, called for the standardisation of health insurance to enable it to thrive.
He announced that Nationwide had signed an agreement with Healthnet to enable its subscribers access quality health care.
Mr Awuah Darko said although there were two methods of payments for healthcare delivery in the country, namely cash and carry and health insurance, it was always cheaper and affordable to go in for the insurance, since a person’s health was guaranteed by that.
He indicated that Nationwide had decided to partner HealthNet due to its simple goal of being the first at offering clinically excellent but affordable private healthcare facilities for insured clients and the local communities.
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The Chairman said Nationwide aimed at sustaining a high level of care and patronage by putting patients at the heart of its healthcare activities and by focusing, specifically, on quality healthcare through effective communication with patients, community engagement, evidence-based clinical practice, advanced information technology, innovative healthcare financing and cost.