THIS POLICY HINDERS HEALTH DELIVERY (AUGUST 28, 2009)

A 2005 audit report currently before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has revealed that 94 experienced medical doctors who should have practised in hospitals in the public sector found themselves occupying administrative positions.
There is also the issue of a large number of heads of departments, agencies and units under the Ministry of Health (MoH) who are specifically trained for the consulting rooms but have been asked to work as administrators.
We concede that there are some units, especially those that deal with the various disease control programmes, that must be manned by personnel with specialised knowledge but the current wholesale plan where every doctor aspires to be a director of a district or region at the expense of the health of the people is not good enough.
It is difficult to understand why the Ghana Health Service is not utilising the services of professional hospital administrators at the district and regional levels so that the doctors can concentrate on saving lives through actual healthcare delivery?
Many of us know of highly competent doctors who have currently put aside their stethoscopes and are involved in full-time administration.
The trend is growing because the doctors who have become administrators enjoy the same allowances medical practitioners are paid such as the additional duty hour allowance. They also undertake foreign trips to be paid per diem.
This situation could also have led to inadequate personnel to spearhead the crusade against public health challenges such as cholera, bilharzia and malaria.
The DAILY GRAPHIC thinks that we can change the status quo because in mission-managed health facilities, qualified hospital administrators have been employed to perform the day-to-day running of the hospitals leaving the doctors to take charge of the consulting rooms.
Another significant point raised by the report was that because the experienced doctors did not work in the hospitals, younger professionals were denied the opportunity to learn from the experiences acquired by their senior colleagues.
The DAILY GRAPHIC, therefore, associates with the observation made by the report that “in a service where brain drain has significant impact on capacity and replacement is very difficult to accomplish, using qualified doctors to undertake administrative task is a further drain on the already under-staffed sector. The effect is pressure and stress on the few medical professionals left to run the facilities”.
It should also be possible for health professionals who opt for administrative duties to spend a few days within the week to work in the consulting rooms.
We think that in order to motivate health professionals to offer efficient services to the people, we must offer more incentives to health professionals who place the consulting rooms and theatres above the administrative functions.
The DAILY GRAPHIC believes that the report by the Auditor-General will open our eyes to the challenges in the health sector in order to design measures to address them.
In the midst of a near health crisis, it behoves the policy makers in the sector to work out arrangements such that our health professionals can offer the best of health services.