By Yussif Ibrahim
Kumasi, July 7, GNA – Hospital administrators have been charged to manage equipment and resources provided by the government efficiently to achieve the intended purpose of acquiring them.
They should ensure that the availability of such facilities are translated into the provision of quality care for patients to help improve the health of Ghanaians while achieving Universal Health Coverage as a country.
“Your role is to ensure that the useful lifespan of these investment is completely achieved through planned maintenance strategies, Dr. Anthony Adofo Fosu, the Deputy Director General of the Ghana Health Service, said at an orientation programme for newly appointed hospital administrators in Kumasi.
The orientation, which sought to build the capacity of the newly appointed administrators to embrace modern administrative practices for the efficient management of hospitals, was attended by participants from all the regions.
Funded by JSI, a global public health organisation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the two-day programme was held on the theme: “Cost Effective and Efficient Management and Administration of Hospitals.”
Dr. Adofo said the theme was timely due to limited resources and stressed on the need for hospital administrators to update their knowledge and be innovative to ensure the implementation of steps and processes to effectively manage the scarce resources in hospitals.
He said the government was committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal Three by ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages.
“To achieve this goal, Ghana has undertaken various health sector reforms with the aim of ensuring improvement in health outcomes,” he explained.
Dr. Henry Nagai, Country Representative of JSI, said his outfit had trained about 100 nurses who had been deployed to various HIV/AIDS treatment sites to support in care services.
He said the work of the nurses was coordinated and managed by the hospital administrators hence the need to support such activities to ensure HIV services were optimised.
According to him, JSI also supported other interventions in the health sector and the goal was to strengthen health systems to deliver quality and accessible healthcare to the people.
Dr. Emmanuel Tinkorang, the Regional Director of Health Services, said it was important to build the right attitude towards work to achieve the needed health outcomes.
“If you have all the knowledge and skills and your attitude is wrong, it is likely that you may not achieve anything,” he reminded the participants.
He entreated them to translate whatever knowledge they would acquire at the training into behavioural change to improve service delivery among hospital staff.
GNA