The government is set to establish a National Command Centre as part of efforts to significantly reduce emergency response time and improve patient outcomes across Ghana’s healthcare system.

Board Chairman of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Prof. Titus Beyuo, said the proposed centre will enable real-time coordination of emergency cases, ensuring patients are directed to hospitals with available beds instead of overcrowded facilities.

He disclosed the plan amid growing concerns about congestion at major referral hospitals, particularly Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, which continues to receive a high volume of emergency cases.

Speaking on the Joy Super Morning Show on Tuesday, March 24, Prof. Beyuo explained that the command centre forms part of a broader emergency patient management system being developed to streamline care delivery nationwide.

“We need the ambulance service to relocate their call centre to this national command centre. We need to get physicians and other people at the command centre who will do an online sorting of patients and redirect them,” he explained.

The initiative is expected to transform how the National Ambulance Service operates, as ambulance teams will no longer send patients automatically to facilities like Korle Bu Teaching Hospital or Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital without confirming bed availability.

Instead, emergency cases will be routed based on real-time data from the command centre, a move expected to reduce delays that often worsen the condition of critically ill patients.

A key challenge the system seeks to address is the lack of visibility on bed availability across hospitals, which frequently results in patients being taken to already overstretched facilities.

Prof. Beyuo indicated that for the system to function effectively nationwide, all of Ghana’s over 200 ambulances must be integrated into the platform—an effort that is currently ongoing.

He added that the command centre will help distribute emergency cases more efficiently across healthcare facilities, easing pressure on major hospitals while improving survival chances.

Prof. Beyuo also credited the Minister of Health for driving the initiative forward, describing the minister as “very committed” to ensuring its implementation.

However, he noted that no timeline has been set for the rollout of the command centre, citing the complexity of the infrastructure, training requirements, and coordination needed across multiple agencies.

Dr. Asare Offei, Chairman of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital Doctors’ Association, has raised concerns over the occupational hazards faced by healthcare workers as a result of Ghana’s persistent “no-bed syndrome.”

Speaking on Joy FM Super Morning Show on Tuesday, March 24, Dr Offei explained that the lack of hospital beds forces patients to be treated on the floor, putting doctors and nurses under physical strain during care delivery.

He noted that in such situations, medical professionals are often compelled to bend or squat for extended periods while attending to patients—an unhealthy posture that can lead to serious long-term health complications.

He warned that repeated exposure to such conditions could result in chronic spinal problems, potentially requiring specialist intervention.

“In the long term, if a patient is on the floor and you have to squat or bend to be able to do something for the patient as a nurse or a doctor, you won't feel it now, but in the near future you are going to be with the spine surgeon and that is a very huge occupational risk,” he lamented.

Dr Offei stressed that the ongoing shortage of hospital beds not only undermines quality patient care but also puts the health and wellbeing of medical practitioners at risk.

“We think that doctors and nurses should not be taken through this as a routine...” He called for steps to solve the challenge. “The steps that need to be taken to ensure that this can be reduced or even solved should be taken.”

Meanwhile, Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh pledged that the government would resolve the no-bed syndrome once and for all after he personally visited the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) following fresh public outrage over a viral video showing patients receiving treatment on the floor of the facility’s Accident and Emergency Centre.

The video, which circulated on social media on March 20, 2026, showed patients described as frail and in need of urgent care lying on hard hospital floors amid an acute bed shortage. The footage reignited public anger over a crisis that had already cost lives earlier in the year.

During his on-site assessment, the minister was briefed by hospital management, who disputed the footage. The Chief Executive Officer of KBTH, Dr. Yakubu Seidu Adam, acknowledged that the emergency unit had recorded a surge in patient numbers but maintained that no one had been left on the floor.

He said some patients had been made to sit in chairs, insisting that at no point were patients made to sleep on the floor. Dr. Adam went further, suggesting the video might have been artificially generated, a claim that drew scrutiny from observers given the documented context of overcrowding at the facility.

The minister nonetheless acknowledged the structural dimensions of the problem. The no-bed crisis at Korle Bu had not begun with the video. In February 2026, a 29-year-old engineer, Charles Amissah, died after emergency medical technicians from the National Ambulance Service spent nearly three hours ferrying him between the Police Hospital, Ridge Hospital, and Korle Bu, all of which had declined to admit him due to the unavailability of beds.

That tragedy triggered the interdiction of two doctors and two nurses at KBTH, the formation of a seven-member Ministry of Health investigation committee, and a presidential directive ordering health workers to admit emergency patients even when beds were unavailable.

That directive led nurses to admit patients despite the lack of beds, creating conditions where some were seated or placed on the floor while awaiting treatment, giving the viral footage a credible institutional context regardless of its origin.

The government outlined plans to complement new emergency guidelines with accelerated hospital capacity investment, including the implementation of Ridge Hospital Phase II, completion of the Police Hospital project, La General Hospital, the Sewua Regional Hospital, and the Afari Military Hospital in the Ashanti Region.

The Health Minister assured the public that these commitments were being actively tracked and that the no-bed syndrome would not be allowed to continue as a recurring feature of Ghana’s public health system.