MoH plans digitalised bed management system

The Ministry of Health (MOH) is working towards deploying a bed management system aimed at digitalising beds in all teaching hospitals in the country.

With this new arrangement, teaching hospitals will know the number of beds available at each ward in real time and also know how long a patient had been on a particular bed, when the last patient was discharged, among others.

The Board Chairman of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), Professor Titus Kofi Beyuo, disclosed this on the sidelines of the 2025 annual performance review meeting of KBTH last Thursday.

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No-bed syndrome

There have been countless cases of patients who needed emergency health care but were denied treatment in some of the major hospitals in the country, especially in Accra, with the excuse that there was no vacant bed available.

The problem had existed for long, with KBTH often cited in some of such instances.

Digitalised bed management system

Professor Beyuo, however, said the MOH had put a team together, to which he belonged, to work on the digitalised bed management system.

"This system will help our staff to be able to deliver their work efficiently because we can track what is happening.

We are setting up a bed management bureau command centre in KBTH with a digital space where the command managers can see, among others, the number of beds that are available," he explained.

Earlier at the performance review, Professor Beyuo mentioned four areas the government's reset agenda could be localised in the hospital's affairs.

These, he said, meant the hospital had reset its processes for both outpatients and inpatients; they had reset their infrastructure and environment to make it a welcoming place for patients; that staff welfare were well taken care of and also that they had eliminated financial barriers to critical care and emergency care.

"If any of us should find ourselves at the ICU in Korle Bu without a relative, will their labs be run?

Will their medications be served on time? Will everything that is needed be provided?

If you should find yourself at the ER in Korle Bu, reset will mean money will not be required before blood bottle is handed over to you, that the doctor can have the opportunity to provide all your medications before asking for money because you may be the most wealthy person but at the point of your need, you may not have access to your funds. 

“You may be unconscious.

So, this is what the resetting should mean," he explained.

Professor Beyuo expressed the commitment of management, board and government to ensure that the hospital remained a centre of excellence, while appealing to staff to have hope and trust in the system and also build a system that they could have confidence in.

"That kind of system that when you are coming to Korle Bu, you will not need to call a colleague.

If you are a consultant and your child needs care and you have to call another consultant then you have failed in your unit.

If you are a head of department and your brother needs care in another department and you have to call your colleague head of department, perhaps you have failed in your own place," he said.

Sufficient beds

On the issue of beds at KBTH, the Chief Executive Officer of the KBTH, Dr Yakubu Seidu Adam, gave the assurance that the hospital had enough beds but the problem had to do with the rate at which they dispatched patients from the accident and emergency unit, where the influx of patients was high, to the other units of the hospital.

He mentioned one of the ways they intended to deal with the problem at that unit to ensure that they did not keep patients too long there, adding that once they were able to stabilise the patients who were brought there, they would be moved to the appropriate unit for care to continue.

There were solidarity messages from the MOH, the Ghana Health Service and other teaching hospitals in the country, including the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).