The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has raised concern over a sharp rise in lawsuits against health facilities, disclosing a jump in the number of suits from 40 in 2023 to 44 in 2024, and to 89 in 2025.
Speaking at the opening of a week-long Structured Legal Education Programme for Legal Officers in Accra, the Deputy Director-General of the GHS, Dr Caroline Reindorf-Amissah, said the trend threatened not only public funds but also public confidence in the health system.
At the end, the training — dubbed “Medicolegal Cases: The Bane of Healthcare Delivery in Ghana” — will come up with standardised guidelines for managing medicolegal incidents, covering who should be notified when an incident occurs, what records must be secured, when the Attorney-General’s Office should be engaged, and the proper authorisation process for settlements.
Dr Reindorf-Amissah pointed to the death of Charles Amissah following a road accident in February this year as a case that had reignited national debate over emergency healthcare delivery and the so-called “no bed syndrome”.
Amissah’s family has filed a GH¢20 million damages suit against three hospitals, several health professionals and the Attorney-General, while a government-appointed committee found serious lapses in emergency response and patient management at the facilities involved.
Beyond that case, Dr Reindorf-Amissah disclosed that the current legal exposure from claims and demands ran into an estimated total of GH¢400 million, funds that she said could otherwise go towards medicines, equipment, infrastructure and patient care.
The Deputy Director-General further referenced concerns previously raised by the Office of the Attorney-General over rising medical negligence and malpractice cases, warning that eroded public trust could cause patients to delay seeking care and push health workers towards overly defensive practice.
Describing lawsuits as a “symptom” rather than the underlying “disease”, Dr Reindorf-Amissah said most claims traced back to preventable upstream failures, namely incomplete medical records, lapses in informed consent, procedural shortcuts in staff discipline, poorly documented contracts or procurement decisions, and complaints left unaddressed.
The remedy, she argued, lay not in the courtroom but in wards, records rooms and management meetings.
“We must therefore never allow ourselves to become so accustomed to the language of litigation that we forget the people behind the cases,” Dr Reindorf-Amissah said.
She consequently outlined five priority measures for the legal officers going forward as strengthening medical documentation; ensuring genuine informed consent and respect for patient rights; enforcing due process in staff disciplinary proceedings; strengthening cooperation with the Attorney-General’s Office, including prompt action on the 30-day statutory notice period for suits against the state; and shifting from reactive to preventive lawyering by embedding legal officers directly in regional and facility-level decision-making.
“In our final session, all of us together, will develop guidelines on medical, legal incidents and cases.
A common label that will carry the lessons of this room back to every facility in the service,” Dr Reindorf-Amissah stated.
Institutional reform
The Head of Legal of the GHS, Zanu Dasah, explained that the service, as part of a reform process, was restructuring and expanding its Legal Department, which had long been understaffed relative to its workload.
He said the country had, therefore, been zoned into five to deploy legal officers more widely, drawing on more than 30 qualified lawyers currently serving within the service, with a longer-term goal of legal representation in every region.
This, Mr Dasah said, was part of strategies to ensure that legal services were decentralised from the national level to the lower level, and “to make sure that we provide legal services closer to our facilities so that they can give them up-to-date advice as and when the need arises”.
A member of the GHS Council, Dr Gina Teddy, who chaired the training programme, said healthcare delivery today went beyond clinical work, indicating that legal, ethical and administrative obligations now shaped how care was provided.
She said the training came as patients grew more informed and assertive, often researching their conditions and even self-diagnosing before visiting a facility, a shift she said health professionals must learn to navigate rather than resist.
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