Medical Superintendents Ghana has called on the government to pay health facilities the cost of treating COVID-19 patients.
The group also wants the establishment of a COVID-19 Health Facility Relief Fund to prevent public hospitals from collapsing.
Dr. Joseph Kojo Tambil, who is the President of the Medical Superintendents Ghana – the umbrella body of all heads of government hospitals at the district and regional levels and the Christian Health Facilities and quasi-government facilities, say their facilities are on the verge of collapse in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He has therefore made a passionate appeal for the payments and the establishment of the Relief Fund.
Dr. Tambil was addressing a press conference after a National Council meeting in Takoradi.
“As heads of hospitals, we are the generals that the nation depends on in the delivery of health services especially in the current war against the COVID-19 pandemic. Our public hospitals are facing existential challenges that if not addressed quickly could result in many of them folding up sooner than later. The COVID-19 crisis sneaked up on all of us like a thief in the dead of night. Since then our hospitals have had to spend huge sums of internally generated revenues towards unplanned, unbudgeted activities and commodities including; PPEs, feeding of suspected and confirmed cases, training of staff, creation of holding and treatment areas among others. This together with the drastic drop in patient attendance has resulted in huge jumps in our expenditures which have far exceeded our revenues. This huge hole if not dealt with will result in some facilities folding up.”
“The solution to this problem lies in the bosom of the central government which is the owner of these facilities. To this end, we call on the government to rescue public hospitals with a relief funding akin to what has been done for some businesses. We have also observed that but for a few hospitals in Accra, no effort has been made towards the payment for services rendered by hospitals designated as treatment centres in other parts of the country. We call for a transparent process to be put in place for the direct payment for services rendered to COVID-19 cases and suspected cases”, he added.
The Medical Superintendents who in respect of the COVID-19 preventive measures called-off their Annual General Meeting, however, urged the government to take a second look at the definition of who is a frontline Health worker is since the current situation has only caused dissatisfaction among staff.
“Managers of hospitals are faced with unprecedented challenges in the deployment of the health workforce in the wake of COVID-19. This is largely due to the isolation of exposed and infected staff in our hospitals. The remaining staff has had to work extra hard to cover up their absent colleagues. We believe that such staff must be compensated for additional work. In relation to this, we want to bring to the notice of govt that its definition of who a frontline health worker is has been a source of dissatisfaction and demotivation. Many of our colleagues have to contend on a daily basis staff refusing to carry out COVID-19 related tasks with the excuse that they are not ‘frontline’ workers. That particular aspect of the reward package for health workers we think ought to be looked at again. Our group is ready and on standby to help out with constructive ideas to deal with this issue.”
The health facility managers also called on the government to commit to the reconfiguration of all Genexpert machines to enable most hospitals to test for COVID-19 to help reduce the long waiting time for results as well as revamp existing deplorable health facilities alongside government’s plan to build 88 new hospitals.
“We are particularly impressed with the expansion of testing facilities within such a short period of time, making Ghana a global leader in this fight. In saying this we would also like to urge govt to expedite action on the plan to re-configuration of the many Gene-Xpert machines to further ramp up the testing capacity and more importantly cut down on the long waiting time for the release of test results. We commend the government for the plan to construct 88 new district hospitals, 6 new regional hospitals (including my own ENRH). We urge the government, however, not to turn a blind eye on the problems of the existing hospitals some of whom are on the brink of collapse. Additionally, some of these hospitals exist by name but are not fit for purpose. We hope these facilities will also be attended to.”
While wishing the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NHIA, Dr. Djane-Selby a speedy recovery from COVID-19, they also called for their six-months NHIA arrears to be paid.
“We would like to put out there that the NHIA has settled most of our facilities for claims up to October or December of 2019. This leaves a backlog of under 6 months and I hasten to add that this is the best the authority has done since 2009. We commend the NHIA and the MOF for making this possible while at the same time urging them to keep this up and improve on it. The ideal will be to reduce the backlog to 3 months or less.”
