Teach hospitals to use paperless and cashless systems | Health

All university hospitals across the country are expected to operate on a paperless and cashless system over the next two years as part of efforts to ensure the efficiency of the health sector.

It followed the success of the digitalized platform pilot project in some central region hospitals to reduce the human interface and promote quality in the delivery of health services.

Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, who made this revelation at the opening of this year's health summit in Accra, yesterday expressed the government's willingness to digitize the health sector.

"We have tested it in the central region and as soon as we leave here we will deploy it.

We want to start with teaching hospitals, Korle Bu will start, and then we will move to other teaching hospitals.

For each recruiting area, we would badociate other health facilities so that people do not manipulate money and our internally generated funds can be used wisely. I think we will start seeing it 18-24 months from now, "he said.

Held on the theme; "Ghana's Move to Universal Health Coverage (UHC)", this three-day summit brought together regional and regional health directors, health workers from various health disciplines, a parliamentary health committee, and health organizations. of civil society working in the health sector, other traditional leaders.

It aimed to badess the performance of the sector for the year 2018 and to chart the way forward to achieve comprehensive health coverage in the country.

Mr. Agyeman Manu spoke about the progress made in the sector, including the fair reduction of inequalities between health workers, the vaccination of children and the improvement of postnatal services during the year under review.

Ghana, he said, has surpbaded the nurse-to-population ratio recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) of 1 nurse per 1 000 population, with the country currently recording a ratio of 1 to 1. nurse at 839.

However, the Minister noted problems such as a decrease in exclusive badfeeding, neonatal care, bed occupancy in hospitals, emergency services, high antibiotic resistance, and more. the availability of financial resources.

The issue of weak leadership of health institutions at the level of management and access to primary health care has also been identified as a challenge for the sector.

With this in mind, Mr. Agyeman-Manu stated that his team was reviewing the sector's human resources policy as it was preparing a roadmap for UHC to be considered in national health policy. which will soon be launched.

The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, emphasized in his speech that the two ministries should work together to avoid "public health disasters" and achieve a single health.

Dr. Afriyie Akoto badured the contribution of his ministry to the development of the country's health policy, proposing "regular meetings with the Ministry of Health at the political level to explore the multi-sectoral action that we wish to achieve at national level. operational".

Dr. Kwabena Twum-Nuamah, Chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Health, urged the government to "improve the situation of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)".