The Health Facilities Regulatory Authority (HeFRA) on Tuesday presented an official license to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, after meeting the licensing requirements of the regulatory body.

This makes KATH the first teaching hospital in Ghana to be accredited and permitted by HeFRA to use its physical facilities to carry out health care delivery services.

The Hospital was awarded 84 per cent in the assessment carried out by HeFRA in terms of facilities, equipment, personnel and services provided, thereby satisfying the standard required for the license to be issued.

Nana Otuo Acheampong, the Board Chairman of HeFRA, made this known at a brief ceremony to officially acknowledge the facility as a licensed teaching hospital in Ghana.

He said the other three teaching Hospitals were also undergoing the assessment process to acquire the license.

He commended KATH for being the first teaching hospital to be licensed and urged management to maintain or improve standards, adding that licensed facilities would still be monitored by his outfit.

Nana Acheampong cautioned that any health facility that has not initiated steps to acquire a license from his outfit risk being closed down as part of efforts to sanitize the health sector to ensure quality health care for the public.

He said the three months grace period given health facilities to register and apply for the license elapsed on March 31, this year, and his outfit would soon crack the whip to weed out defaulters.

He stated that quite a number of facilities had registered for the license but have since abandoned the process and urged such facilities to immediately take steps to resume the process or face sanctions.

The Board Chairman said it was mandatory for licensed facilities to display their license at vantage points, urging the public to look out for the license anytime they visited a facility.

 

Dr Oheneba Owusu-Danso, the Chief Executive of KATH, said the processes that a health facility had to go through before earning the license, was critical to maintaining certain standards for quality health care delivery.

He said it would put managers of health facilities on their toes and make them more efficient, considering the constant monitoring by HeFRA.

He said KATH was endowed with the required personnel to deliver the needed quality service, saying that the priority of the Hospital was not about maintaining the standards but improving on areas where they could do much better.

The challenge of the Hospital after the license, he noted, was how to mobilize more resources to train personnel and bring in new equipment to improve on service delivery.