Prof Ohene Adjei
PROFESSOR OHENE Adjei, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), has said the hospital is currently operating under very challenging conditions in the face of huge disparity between cost of medical consumables and equipment, and low tariffs being paid by the National Health Insurance Authority.
According to him, while it currently cost the hospital GH¢492.33 to treat Bone Marrow Hypoplasia in children under 12, for example, a meager GH¢237.60 was received from the national health insurance as reimbursement for the serve.
Speaking at a two-day mid-year performance review workshop of KATH in Kumasi, Prof. Adjei asked all the hospital’s directorates and units to identify new services that were not covered by the national health insurance and render such services purely on fees-for-service basis.
“This initiative may partially help to generate extra funds to meet some of the maintenance and other immediate needs of the directorates,” he noted.
The move is seen as a response to address some of the difficulties being faced by KATH after a withdrawal of a levy introduced in recent times to mobilize financial resources to cater for the maintenance needs of the clinical directorates and units at the hospital.
The KATH CEO also said the 57-year-old ‘Gee’ block, which used to be the infrastructure backbone of the hospital, was no longer able to meet the operational demands of the hospital due to old age.
Lack of comprehensive renovation of the block, Prof. Adjei added, had weakened its ability to cope with the current workload.
According to him, the end result of this was the frequent facility breakdowns and its attendant interruption in service delivery to patients and huge rise in the cost of maintenance.
Whilst in 2009 an amount of GH¢476,158.00 was spent on maintenance, the figure shot up to GH¢1,103,091.00 in 2010.
“In 2011, the maintenance expenditure ballooned to GH¢2,212,162.16. This expenditure is expected to rise further in 2012,” he said.
He stated, however, that management, with the support of the board and government, continued to invest in a number of projects to improve the infrastructure base of the hospital during the period under review.
He mentioned that an ultra-modern eye clinic and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Centre were over 95 percent complete.
Prof. Adjei disclosed that the eye centre was being funded from the hospital’s internally generated fund and development partners, including USAID and Himalayan Cataract Project of the USA.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi