CHAG staff trained in quality improvement

Thirty medical professionals from the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) have been trained and certified under a global health quality improvement programme to enable them to assess quality control of health facilities.

The training forms part of efforts to ensure that Ghana’s efforts at achieving quality health care and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) for all is achieved by 2030.

A statement issued by PharmAccess Foundation, operators of SafeCare standards, in Accra last Monday said the trainees would be deployed to assist all 330 CHAG hospitals and clinics to ensure quality service delivery.

The SafeCare Country Manager, Ms Bonifacia Benefo Agyei, was quoted in the statement as saying that the professionals from CHAG member facilities had undergone the ISQua-accredited SafeCare Assessor Training to allow them to become certified assessors.

“These trained assessors will be deployed to CHAG facilities to guide hospitals and clinics to improve the quality of care to the 6.5 million Ghanaians who patronise their services,” it said.

It added that the assessors would be using SafeCare standards to conduct a series of evaluations to measure the performance of the facilities against certain international benchmarks before rating the facilities.

Furthermore, they would support, monitor and influence change in the way quality health care was supposed to be delivered, it said.

PharmAccess Foundation, the statement said, would use the assessments and improvement activities to build the capacity of facility staff over a period of three years.

SafeCare in Ghana

Operated by the PharmAccess Foundation, SafeCare creates transparency for patients, providers, insurers, banks and governments and acts as a tool for self-regulation and benchmarking.

The statement said SafeCare empowered progress in care delivery of healthcare providers by helping them to measure, monitor and improve their services using innovative solutions.

The Country Director of PharmAccess Ghana, Dr Maxwell Antwi, said the successful implementation of the CHAG-SafeCare quality improvement programme would open the door for other public and private health facilities in the country to benefit from such internationally acclaimed standardised healthcare delivery.

The Executive Director of CHAG, Dr James Duah, also said “the SafeCare certification will inspire confidence in patients that they will receive some standardised quality of care in CHAG facilities”.