By Kwabia Owusu-Mensah
Kumasi March 25, GNA – Continuous quality improvement in healthcare delivery services is key in any strategy to rebrand the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).
Professor Ellis Owusu Dabo, the Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), said the new KATH agenda would require the implementation of strategic policies to achieve the desired results.
He said the strategies must include research, innovation and creativity among staff, continuous training with cutting-edged technology, quality and excellence client service delivery, and improvement in ethical values of workers at the facility.
He was speaking at the 2023 annual performance review meeting of the hospital on the theme: “The new KATH agenda-recalibrating efforts for enhanced health service outcomes: the role of stakeholders”.
Prof. Dabo said KATH needed strong partnerships and collaboration with all key stakeholders in the recalibrating efforts to improve health outcomes at the facility.
He said the success of a teaching hospital requires concerted efforts of diverse stakeholders from industry, researchers, policy makers, healthcare professionals among others, to achieve the desired goals.
The Pro-Vice Chancellor praised the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, for leading the initiative to mobilise financial resources to undertake comprehensive rehabilitation of the hospital and called on all Ghanaians to support the efforts by contributing to the fund, to ensure the successful completion of the project.
Prof. Dabo said KNUST would continue to partner KATH to train health care professionals, undertake research and promote community services for the benefit of the Ghanaian people.
Professor Otchere Addai-Mensah, the Chief Executive of KATH, said management with the support of the board and other stakeholders, launched several initiatives in 2023 to improve the infrastructure base, operational systems, governance structures, services, staff morale, supervision and discipline at the hospital.
These interventions were part of the new agenda to enhance service outcomes through improved productivity, accountability, staff capacity and welfare, patients’ satisfaction, resource mobilisation, cost reduction, retooling and research capacity, he said.
He said the net effect of these interventions was the general decline in the number of death cases at the hospital, and increase in the number of admissions, surgeries, OPD attendance, patients experience and revenue.
Prof. Addai-Mensah said the introduction of payment of patients’ bills via mobile money transfers had enabled these clients and their benefactors to honour payment of invoices from everywhere in the world.
Again, the hospital, in collaboration with the Ghana Post, had introduce home delivery of medicines to chronic but stable patients.
This would save such clients time, inconvenience and the drudgery of commuting to the hospital just to refill their medicines, with all the attendant transportation risks.
Additionally, centralised intravenous additive services had been introduced by the pharmacy unit of the Child Health Directorate to make life saving but expensive medications readily, affordably and safely available to needy patients.
He said this new service had drastically helped in reducing the cost of medications and infections and maximised therapeutic outcomes, by ensuring the delivery of appropriate doses, while preventing misidentifications and overdoses to save lives.
Prof. Addai-Mensah said in 2024, management with the support from the board would continue to invest in the adoption of innovations and conduct operational research as part of the overall strategy to optimise the delivery of tertiary healthcare services at the hospital.
GNA