The Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, has commended management of the Upper East Regional hospital for keeping the facility tidy and neat.
The Committee, led by its Chairman, Dr Mark Kurt Nawaane, toured the facility and interacted with patients on admission at the Accident and Emergency Unit, the Paediatric unit, among other departments.
The visit to the hospital was part of the Committee’s working visit to Teaching and Regional Hospitals across the country to interact with management and staff and ensure patients received quality healthcare services.
Dr Nawaane, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Nabdam Constituency in the Region, told management and staff; “I am happy to inform you that when we went round, your ward and other units, they were very decent; the place is neat.”
He observed there were a lot of patients at the facility seeking medical care, and further commended management, saying “There are a lot of patients here, which means that you are providing services very well.”
The Committee, through its chairman, however, expressed concern about the hospital’s low revenue generation, and urged management to ensure their revenue mobilization march up with the status of the facility and the attendance.
“A big hospital like this with revenue of GH¢8,000,000.00 is too low. Let us all decide that we must help the hospital,” Dr Nawaane said.
He noted that the hospital’s challenges, ranging from obsolete equipment to deplorable staff quarters, could be addressed with huge revenue generation.
The chairman acknowledged that even though the hospital was not supposed to make so much profit, he stressed the need for management and staff to be innovative to beef up the hospital’s revenue. “Let us help the hospital to earn money,” he said.
Dr Nawaane said patients should not be allowed to go out of the hospital for laboratory investigations, x-ray services or even buy medicines from outside the facility, and that such basic services should be rendered in the hospital to help generate revenue.
“If you do that and there is revenue, the Health Committee will help you to spend your own money, and if you say you are working hard, make money!” he said, and cautioned that even though he urged them to make money, they should not over charge patients.
Dr Aiden Suntaa Saanwie, Medical Director of the Hospital said management was happy about the Committee’s visit to the facility, as it gave them the opportunity to see at firsthand the facility’s activities.
He said the visit afforded them the opportunity to put before the Committee their concerns and was hopeful that the Committee would use its lobbying skills to help them solve some of their problems.
Dr Saanwie said management had equally taken note of the concerns raised by the Committee, and would work to address them, and appealed to the Committee to assist management to refurbish its maternity block and tuberculosis ward that were left out of the hospital’s expansion work.
GNA
