‘Use technology to improve healthcare delivery’

Most Rev. Emmanuel Kofi Fianu, Bishop of Ho, says the use of technology in health delivery should aim at improving quality healthcare to the patient, adding that it was important to look at the relationships between human beings and the use of technology in order to guarantee the patients safety.  

He thanked health workers for their dedicated efforts in serving humanity and reechoed the call on them to always work with compassion and love.

Bishop Fianu, made the remarks, when he recently chaired the opening of the 13^th Annual Conference of National Catholic Health Service at Ho, which was themed: “Patient Safety & Modern Health Technologies”.

While entreating the health facilities to institute routine maintenance regimes to ensure medical equipment work efficiently, the new Bishop of Ho charged health mangers to ensure effective data collection and timely delivery of reports to complement the work of NCHS Directorate.

Most Rev. Joseph Afrifah-Agyekum, Bishop of Koforidua and Bishop Responsible for Health, in a keynote address, urged healthcare providers even in their use of modern health technologies, to always approach their daily work with God.

For any health system to succeed he noted that it was important to discuss the use of modern technologies; open up for transformation, and to be guided by Catholic values in the usage of these modern health technologies in their facilities.

He stressed the importance of maintenance of medical equipment, emphasing that the maintenance of technologies must be the responsibility the whole facilities and not one department alone.  

While entreating the Ghana Health Service to show good fate to avoid duplicity in the allocation of medical equipment, Bishop Afrifah-Agyekum bemoaned the fact that the delayed payment of the National Insurance Scheme rendered by mission facilities, adding that it threatens the survival of these facilities.

The prelate lamented about the some deductions and charges made on the claims due the facilities, without considering inflation, and said this treatment was unacceptable.   

He said the Church was considering alternative actions including legal one to ensure that the National Insurance Authority made prompt payment of claims.

“We will not stop agitating for what is due our facilities,” he said, adding that “what we are demanding is a right and not a privilege.”    

In his address, Mr. George Adjei, Director of the Health Directorate, highlighted the need for the responsible use of Modern Health Technologies to engender patient safety.

To ensure patient safety, Mr. Adjei also reiterated the fact it was duty of health professional to continuously educate patients to appropriately use health technologies to better improve upon their health.

The Director, commending the warm collaboration between the NCHS and the Ghana Health Service at the national and regional level, entreated facilities to keep monitoring Ebola cases and report suspected cases at the designated places.      

Mr. Peter Yeboah, Executive Secretary of the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), noted that the recent spate in legal suits and claims against CHAG Hospitals for cases of malpractice, medication and surgical errors, treatment delays and a host of adverse events highlights to need to situate patient safety at the centre of healthcare provision.

He stated that the adoption of Modern Health Technologies could potentially improve access to healthcare, improve patient safety and ultimately enhance clinical outcomes and cost effectiveness, and pledged CHAG’s support to the NCHS in improve quality healthcare delivery.

Touching on National Health Insurance Authority’s scaling up on capitation payment, which Mr. Yeboah said offers potential challenges and opportunities for CHAG facilities to further consolidate, deepen its Christian values of love, charity, compassion and quality healthcare.

At a Mass to kick-start the three-day Annual Conference, prayers were said for 26 departed workers from various NHCS Facilities across the country, meanwhile four distinguished health workers including Rev. Msgr. Cletus Frank Egbi, Executive Secretary of Health for the Ho Diocese, were awarded for their long outstanding and dedicated service in their respective facilities.

Mgsr. Egbi, on behalf of the awardees thanked the Health Directorate for the honour and present given them.

“I thought I was only working without being seen; I thought I was just helping in a small way to improve upon the health of the people,” he said after the awards was handed over to him and thanked all his collaborators and workers in the health facilities for their support.

He however noted that anybody could achieve big results, if we could do our little bit and see our work as a call to serve, instead of just seeing it as a profession.

“Do the little you can do, keep doing what you are called to do and do it sincerely and God will bless you,” he stated.  

Earlier in a welcome, he stressed that the use of technology should seek to improve life and not endanger it, adding that man cannot be to a slave to technology.

At the Conference health experts took participants, topics including The Human Factor in Health Technologies; Current and Future Outlook for Health Technologies; Practical Issues in Health Aided Technologies-A Pathologist’s Perspective and Self-Administered Health Technologies-Role of Health Worker.