Patients who visit the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) facilities will from now be guaranteed quality care services. 

This is because CHAG in partnership with PharmAccess Ghana have introduced an international quality improvement program SafeCare to assess, improve and rate the standard of care in CHAG facilities.

Under the project by SafeCare and PharmAccess Ghana, some twenty eight quality assessors have been trained and certified to conduct checks in all the over 300 CHAG facilities.

This is to deal with concerns of misdiagnosis, medical-related deaths and complications associated with health care delivery in Ghana, as a result of poor services. 

These added to inadequate infrastructure makes an already stretched health system, worse.

Country director for PharmAccess Ghana, Dr. Maxwell Antwi is confident the project, which is a novelty in Ghana, will help match quality services with the patient demand.

He told an event to hand over certificates to twenty eight assessors, “at the back end of the project would be solid data analytics which will provide quality quarterly reports and performance as well as benchmarking of health care facilities across denominations.”

“At the end of which we expect that 80% of all CHAG facilities would have higher internationally certified quality scores than their baseline.”

He emphasised, “CHAG facilities should after the rollout of the SafeCare programme, be in the position to provide better health care to patients and clients than they are doing now.”

Country manager of SafeCare, Bonifacia Benefo Agyei believes quality and equity in care regardless of a patient’s social status would be a key outcome of the assessment.

“The first thing is that the assessors are going in with the standards to check the whole facility; everywhere including the washrooms, the processes , systems, the way they are delivering quality, their equipment, infrastructure and many more.”

According to her, “once the standards are used to measure, the results of it will show the gaps that exist in the space. The next thing is to sit with service providers to plan quality improvement schemes out of the identified gaps.”

She added, “The plan that is designed is going to be implemented by the facilities while the assessors serve as technical support in implementing it.”

For executive director of CHAG, Dr. Peter Yeboah, the assessor project by safe care and pharm Access is timely, at a time many facilities are recording low patient visits due to covid 19.

“Our patients will from now have the level of confidence and trust in our health system. They will come to our facilities with a sense of assurance that indeed they will get the best.”

Dr. Yeboah noted, “The Covid-19 pandemic has led to decrease in attendance to health facilities. Therefore we are confident the SafeCare intervention being promoted by our assessors will lead to a situation where our patients come to our facilities with that trust.”

The 28 assessors who have gained ISO certification, would be required to review their certification annually. 

And by close of 2021, all CHAG facilities would have been taken through the baseline assessment and their level upgraded if they are found to have fallen below the standard.