Doctors and nurses of health facilities across the Ashanti Region have reverted to taking medical records in folders and exercise books following the breakdown of their electronic health platform, which has been out of service for over a week.

The lives of patients are currently at risk due to delayed medical care delivery.

At the Ejisu Government Hospital, patients were seen wielding folders in queue to seek medical attention.

Their healthcare officers buried their heads in the folders to write their medical data.

Patients have been left distraught, waiting in the long queues.

“I came here around 7 am and after waiting in long queues I have now been served. If I knew this was the situation, I would have gone to a private facility,” a patient said.

Over the course of the week, major public health facilities have witnessed long winding queues of patients seeking critical care.

The situation has been similar at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and Suntreso Government Hospital.

Health officers reportedly resorted to writing in exercise books, presenting a physical discomfort to the frontline workers and a financial burden on management.

In the same year, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) forecasted that Ghana will achieve universal health coverage before 2030.

Chief Executive of the NHIA, Dr. Da-Costa Aboagye, emphasized the implementation of innovative measures, including a forthcoming preventive healthcare initiative integrated into the NHIS claim package.

This initiative aims to provide medical check-ups on birthdays for all enrolled Ghanaians, with the goal of alleviating financial burdens on both individuals and the nation.

“To achieve universal health coverage, you see there are things you need to do. So far, over our 20-year history, the NHIS 20 years history, it has been curative. So curative means that you get sick before you go to the hospital. But we believe that with the rise of the noncommunicable diseases, hypertension for example, hypertension contributes a lot of our claims, diabetes.”

“So we want to reduce the cost burden of the curative services. By doing that, you introduce what we call a preventive approach, so annual health check for every Ghanaian. So you detect the diseases early. Not only that, you also make sure by doing that, you increase life expectancy and, you reduce the cost burden on the patient in the whole country.”

“The modalities are being worked out, and I’m sure very soon, preventive health care will become part of our claim benefit package in such a way that on your month of birth, you’ll get a notification from the NHIA that goes to the nearest health facility and check your basic vitals. The vitals, obviously, your sugar levels, your, BP, your body weight, and all those things will be included…Reforms are taking place, and I’m hoping that it will all come to the benefit of all Ghanaians,” he stated.

Dr. Da-Costa Aboagye, who voiced concern about co-payments at various health facilities, asserted that the issue must be tackled directly.

“Co-payments are a big issue, and we need to address it head-on. We need to address it by our systems, and we also need to address it from the provider’s point of view. Now if you look at our systems, okay, the government e-pharmacy platform offers us the best solution out of this co-payment.

“Because now when you go to the hospital facilities, they tell you that some of the medicines are not there. But it’s very difficult for our clients to understand the packages we provide in terms of the medicines because they are not experts.”

“So by this, what we are doing is we put the responsibility on the pharmacies to make sure that they upload their prescriptions on the e-pharmacy platforms because of the property addressing system. So it can be delivered to their local pharmacies or the patients can go to the various, local pharmacies and collect it.

“So once we also review the tariffs and give the pharma companies and the facilities the accurate tariffs, we will seek parliamentary approval for what we call the automatic price adjustment so that we have what we call the national tariff review committee that will look at the economic conditions and review the tariffs as we go along.”

“In this case, we from the NHIS will be fulfilling our part, and we will now put the burden on the facilities to fulfil their part. Then we use the systems to check in terms of the e-pharmacy platform to make sure that patients are not being charged for the services that are being paid for by the NHIS,” he stated.Some facilities confirm losing medical data records of patients since 2023.

Many of them are now desperately seeking alternatives to ease the burden.

Management of the Manhyia Government Hospital, after enduring a week of the discomforting situation, has found an alternative digital platform.

For many of these facilities, they urgently want a return to the electronic system.

In 2024, the Ministry of Health launched the National Health Database Platform and HEFRA’s Digitized Health Facility Assessment system, supported by the USAID Health Strengthening Accelerator Project.

The platform is set to integrate health data from all agencies under the ministry, centralizing information for better decision-making and improved healthcare services.

Chief Director of the Ministry, Alhaji Hafiz Adam, highlighted that the platform, developed by Results for Development (R4D), enables the Ministry to visualize health priorities and make data-driven decisions through advanced analytics.

“The development of the National Health Database and HEFRA’s Digitized Health Facility Assessment Platform is crucial for achieving Universal Health Coverage,” Alhaji Hafiz Adam stated.

Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, in a speech delivered on his behalf, commended the Accelerator project for its contributions to various critical areas such as health sector planning, service expansion, primary healthcare, digitalization, and regulatory reforms.

He emphasized the project’s role in shaping the Health Sector Medium Term Development Plan (2022-2025), a key roadmap for delivering essential health services in Ghana.

The Minister thanked USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other partners for their support, urging continued collaboration to ensure that every Ghanaian has access to quality healthcare