Authorities at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital are patting themselves on the back for what they say is their highest half -year medical and clinical performance in five years.
Out-patients attendance to the facility in the first half of this year rose to over 36,000 up by 35 percent of the 2013, while maternal deaths dropped marginally from 64 to 55.
125,000 people sought specialist OPD care, representing 38 percent increase over last year’s figure of 92,000.
However, deliveries at the hospital dropped slightly from over 5,000 in 2013 to just below the same figure.
The trend over the review period means demand for the hospital’s services increased between 50 percent and 150 percent.
The Family Medicine Unit, for instance, recorded 8, 561 visitors as against 4, 171 in 2013, representing a whopping 105 percent.
These revelations come at a time when the hospital is struggling to redeem its image following the missing babies’ saga, as well as having to contend with delayed payment of claims by the National Health Insurance Authority.
The hospital was partially closed down in the course of the review period after an assault on staff by some Zongo youth in protest of the disappearance of the body of a still-born baby.
Acting Chief Executive, Isaiah Offeh Gyimah, attributes the modest gains to what he describes as staff resilience and dedication in the midst of adversity. He concedes the missing babies’ saga had a lot of effects on the hospital.
“The Suweiba (missing baby) thing hurt us but somehow it brought to the fore our deficiencies so we said fine: what can we do better and we did that. And then we encouraged our staff. You remember some of them were physically assaulted; we spoke to them. So we brought them into the picture and this encouragement management gave to our staff has started yielding results”, he said.
A number of infrastructure development as quality of in-patient care at the hospital improved tremendously.
For instance, the hospital managed to repair its obsolete Oxygen Plant for resumption of in-house production of oxygen. The move is to reduce the huge expenditure the hospital incurs to source oxygen from private companies.
The hospital currently sources half of its oxygen needs from private companies at a cost of GH?60,000 per month.
The period also saw renovation of the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) building for the first time since 1993 at a cost of Gh?107,414.
Mr. Offeh- Gyimah concedes the marginal drop in deliveries at the hospital is a price it had to pay for the missing baby saga.
He told Nhyira FM that a review session that management will invest in customer service training for staff, using newly-designed in-house training modules.
“We have become more alert to our responsibilities towards the clients that we receive here. We were unable for example to produce the body of the still born baby and that hurt Suweiba and the family very much. It cut a slur on our image,” Mr Gyimah explained.
The KATH Acting-CEO who appeared surprised majority of the general public, including clients took to bashing hospital at the time the hospital needed them most is convinced the hospital that prides itself as being a center of excellence has learnt its lessons.
“If you listen to radio phone-ins, you realize that most of the people who called actually condemned us and very few of them recalled the good treatment we give them so we are revising our lessons,” Mr. Gyimah intimated.
The experience from that incident is forcing hospital’s management to include customer care training into its in-house training modules.
Source: myjoyonline.com
