Dr. Alberta Adjebeng Biritwum-Nyarko
The Ghana health service will soon roll out an approach called Networks of Practice to increase access to quality essential health care and population based service.
This initiative is to build networks of health facilities at sub district level and support them better to work optimally to strengthen primary health care services in the country.
Director Policy, Planning and Evaluation at the Ghana Health Service (GHS) Dr. Mrs. Alberta Adjebeng Biritwum-Nyarko, speaking at the Information Ministry Meet the Press Series in Accra, said “Network of practice is a specific arrangement between public, private or facilities that provide service delivery to the people in the communities”
She revealed that health centers will be upgraded to model health care (standard), bringing quality services closer to Ghanaians and reduce burden on individual seeking health care.
“And we are arranging these networks so that together they are able to provide better services to the client who patronize their services, reduce unnecessary deaths, and also ensure that we rapidly and appropriately respond to clinical and public health emergencies wherever they happen,” she added.
“Looking at the situation that we have now we believe that sub district and health centers can be improved in a lot of ways and that is what the network of practice seeks to do,” she stated.
According to her, the GHS will make sure that going forward, sub district health centers provide 24 hour services to their clients, and will also provide doctors outreach services to the health centers and the CHPS zones that are in the sub district.
“A doctor can now come to them, it reduces their cost and also gives them better quality services, also we are improving feedback system, whatever services we provide to you the precious people of Ghana, we always need feedback from you to know whether what we are doing is meeting your needs,’’ she said.
“So we have quality improvement approaches like the community score card system that makes us periodically get information from the community as to how we can better serve their health needs,” she added.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri & Nafisa Abdul Razak