Healthcare delivery in Ghana must be defined – Dr Taylor

President of Sanford World Clinic, Dr Kojo Taylor has said healthcare delivery in Ghana must be redefined.

Dr Taylor, who believes people deserve the best as far as healthcare is concerned says it’s important that health facilities put in the right measures to ensure patients or patrons of their services are satisfied.

According to him, he has always had a vision of setting up a quality healthcare facility which will replicate international standards when he came back to the country and his outfit is living up to his dream.

“When I first came into the country and initiated this programme, the desire was to bring quality healthcare service from America and replicate it in Ghana. At the time it was just a dream no one could define it, today is a defining moment of what that dream was at that time” Dr. Taylor said when his outfit received a certificate of honour in upgrading to SafeCare level 4.

Dr Taylor noted that patient outcome in healthcare delivery is very paramount and hence that brings about quality healthcare.

Dr Taylor recounted a testimony of a patient who had received quality healthcare from Sanford World Clinic and indeed the excited Doctor stated that the initiatives his outfit is implementing are working.

“We can define quality, they can define quality but until the patient defines it as acceptable quality, it is not.”

On his part, Dr Maxwell Antwi, the Country Director of PharmAccess International, Ghana, said, “SafeCare is not only about clinical improvement but the health facilities will, however, begin to see improvement in their finances and business performance.”

“SafeCare level 4 means that Sanford clinic is two more steps away from being global international best practice clinic” he emphasized.

Dr Antwi noted that there is no safe care level 5 in Ghana so Sanford attaining the level 4 is among the “crème de la crème” of clinical work in Ghana.

Sanford World Clinic in 2016 entered into an agreement with PharmAccess Ghana to use SafeCare to facilitate quality improvement programme in two Sanford Clinics, thus, Sanford World Clinic in Cape Coast and Kasoa.

The objective of the agreement was to establish and implement continuous quality improvement systems at the clinics to ensure quality, safe and efficient service delivery to their clients.

Sanford World Clinic was rated at baseline with the SafeCare standards. The results of the assessment were then prioritized into tailor-made improvement plans which served as 12 months action plans for the clinic's implementation.

Through the commitment of management and leadership of Sanford and keen participation from all staff, both clinics attained an over 80% of the improvement plans and therefore progressed from the initial level (SafeCare level 2) to an impact level (SafeCare level 4).

SafeCare enables health facilities to measure and improve their quality, safety and efficiency of services. SafeCare introduced the two clinics to innovative tools, training modules and facilitation which assisted the clinics to progress through manageable steps of quality improvement.