Post IPPHL, I still remain the Country Head for Health Information Management in Ghana. Towards the end of last year, I voluntarily applied for a year off from the office to primarily focus on my PhD program. Along the line, I took advantage of the granted time off to apply my acquired IPPHL skills to an area I have always been passionate about; setting up a private medical practice that could help cater for some unmet health needs in rural Ghana.
I am currently the Executive Administrator of my private establishment TopMED HealthCare. The primary aim for establishing TopMED was to extend quality but affordable clinical and diagnostic healthcare services to the deprived population in rural Ghana. Although I have always enjoyed my job as the Country Head of Health Information Management, I have also wished to apply my skills as a clinician and a sonologist to impact directly on the lives of people, particularly the rural poor. In fact, it has over the years been my heart’s desire to be able to give something back to humanity and I think through the establishment of TopMED HealthCare, I have partially achieved that aspiration.
TopMED HealthCare currently offers quality but affordable clinical care and medical diagnostic support to rural folks in three districts of the Eastern Region of Ghana.
Reduction of Maternal mortality has been at the forefront of my agenda. The Diagnostics wing since its establishment has offered maternal health support services to mainly pregnant women in rural communities. To ensure that the rural poor receives the essential diagnostic services, we eliminated a major bottleneck that tends to inhibit them from seeking essential services on time. Instead of them travelling over to our facility to be served, we rather moved our services to their very doorstep. With this convenient arrangement in place, we have been able to reach thousands of pregnant women with ultrasound and laboratory diagnostic services.
Through our efforts, many potentially life threatening conditions in pregnancies such as high grade placenta previa, ectopic gestations, severe anemia and significant proteinuria have been diagnosed and promptly referred to appropriate higher centers for attention. Our activities have been lauded by stakeholders within our areas of operation and our contribution towards reduction of material mortality cannot be overstated. We hope to expand the coverage of our outreach services in the months ahead to include three additional districts. To achieve this goal, I am working towards soliciting for support from potential collaborators who share in our belief that the poor also deserves quality healthcare.
Having identified the need for complementary clinical services in our catchment of operation, we decided to expand our services to include hospital care. Consequently, TopMED Hospital was started in January 2018 at Kwahu also in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Services offered include Out-patient care, In-patient care, Surgeries, Obstetric and Gynaecological Services, as well as in-house Medical Laboratory and Diagnostic services. TopMED Hospital serves as a referral point for health centers within catchment.
Surgery affordability is one of the main challenge confronting the rural folks of Kwahu. It is not uncommon to see patients with inguinal hernias, fibroid uteruses, unsightly goiters etc. walking about without seeking care. The big question is why have they not taken advantage of the National Health Insurance Scheme to have their surgical problems solved? Well, it does not come that simple!
It is TopMED’s hope to find benevolent collaborators who could at least half the cost of surgery for such clients with pressing surgical needs.
As both a director and the Executive Administrator of TopMED, I am the lead person in charge of day to day management of TopMED’s HealthCare. Right from its inception, I made it a point to apply all the leadership skills acquired from IPPHL at this private premises. I must admit that the result has so far been very amazing.
Admittedly, launching TopMED has been relevant to my policy memo. In the solution analysis of my memo titled HOW CAN GHANA ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE FUNDING FOR ITS HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME? , copayment for healthcare was proposed as a sure means to improve the quality of healthcare delivery in Ghana. It is interesting to know that even without any endorsement by the Ghana Health Insurance Authority, the health care systems have naturally been drifting towards copayment for services. With Health Insurance being highly politicized in Ghana, influencing a country-wide change with my policy solution would definitely be a herculean task. However, I thought it wise to find ways and means of testing the policy solution at some lower levels and evidence of a success stories shared to influence a broader scale change. And that is where TopMED becomes relevant. For example, if a rural patient would be willing to pay out of pocket for quality clinical and diagnostic services, then copayment for service which could guarantee similar quality of care at a lesser cost would highly be welcomed.
In addition, to launching TopMED, I am presently in my third year of a 4-year Ph.D. Program. My research work titled “Assessment of DHIMS2 Data Quality and Use in Ghana” seeks to elucidate reasons behind the poor data quality of Ghana’s Health Information Management System called DHIMS2. DHMS2 is Ghana’s version of DHIS2 platform developed by Oslo University in Norway. The study also intends to understand the poor use of DHIMS2 data for management decision making by managers of the country’s healthcare system.
What I’ve learned since the conclusion of IPPHL, is that one does not need to have everything or be fully ready to be able to make an impact on humanity. You can and must always start from somewhere.
More photos from Samuel