New healthcare scheme introduced in Ghana

A new programme that will enable patients access healthcare in their homes, workplaces or in  doctors’ consulting rooms at appointed times has been introduced in Ghana.

The programme has been designed to ensure that doctors are on call or standby to provide medical care to patients throughout the year.

Briefing the Media in Accra, Nana Kwesi Amo, Executive Chairman of Organisation and Systems Limited (OSL), the initiators and managers of the scheme, said each doctor would see a maximum of two patients per hour.

According to him, subscribers would pay GHc200,500 or more, annually to receive different types of cards that will determine whether a patient will receive healthcare at home, workplace or in a consulting room.

The programme dubbed “Convenient Healthcare Access Scheme (CHAS), provides an electronic structured appointment scheduling system which enables doctors to indicate their availability at specific times of the day.

The system will enable CHAS patients have easy, secure, and reliable and stress-free access to healthcare services.

He said the system would not book appointments for public hospitals between 0800 hours 1400 hours during week days, adding that CHAS would also not cover the cost of healthcare delivery.

Nana Amo said the scheme would be of immense benefit to the health sector and the general public and that the home and workplace services alone could provide healthcare to at least 300,000 patients outside the premises of the existing hospitals and clinics every month.

“This will translate into 30 district level hospitals being added to the existing healthcare infrastructure in the Greater Accra Region at no cost to the state. This scheme will certainly help to reduce the long queues and congestion, in especially the public hospitals and also help the poor gain quicker access to healthcare services,” he said.

Workplace healthcare delivery, he noted, will also help to reduce labour absenteeism in Ghana.

Nana Amo said CHAS would make it possible for pregnant women to access ante-natal care at home or the workplace, while chronic disease patients with diabetes and hypertension among others could also receive relevant periodic medical reviews at home or the workplace instead of going to the hospital every month to join long queues.

He said doctors and other health personnel were expected to earn competitive income under the scheme and expressed the hope that the scheme would reduce their propensity to go on strike or go elsewhere to seek greener pastures.

Source: GNA