Research from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Yields New Findings on Health Systems and Reform (Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Mapping: A Spotlight on Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme): Health and Medicine – Health Systems and Reform

2022 JUN 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health & Medicine Business Daily -- Fresh data on health systems and reform are presented in a new report. According to news reporting from Kumasi, Ghana, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Ghana is a lower-middle-income economy that has made significant efforts to improve its health system, in order to achieve universal health coverage.”

Financial supporters for this research include Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology: “Ghana has adopted strategic health purchasing as an important tool for efficient utilization of resources. This paper focuses on Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) analyzing its governance arrangements and purchasing functions; and providing recommendations for improvement. The study applied the Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Tracking Framework co-created by the Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC) and its partners to collect data from secondary and primary sources between September 2019 and June 2020. A descriptive and narrative approach was used to synthesize information on the NHIS governance arrangements and purchasing functions based on the framework. Benchmarks were used to describe the NHIS on the continuum from passive to strategic purchasing and to identify steps to make purchasing more strategic. Strengths and weaknesses were found in governance and purchasing functions.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Progress was seen in how the NHIS selects the services in the benefit package, regularly reviewing the package to respond to the health needs of the population, and in how it selectively contracts with providers, particularly private providers, to ensure that standards for quality of care are met. However, challenges remain in performance monitoring, due to claims being mostly processed manually, and provider payment, due to frequent unbundling and upcoding of services Ghana has made significant strides toward the achievement of universal health coverage, but there is room for improvement in provider payment and performance monitoring.”

For more information on this research see: Strategic Health Purchasing Progress Mapping: A Spotlight on Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme. Health Systems & Reform, 2022,8(2). The publisher for Health Systems & Reform is Taylor & Francis Group.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/23288604.2022.2058337.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Eugenia Amporfu, Department of Economics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Additional authors for this research include Peter Agyei-Baffour, Anthony Edusei, Jacob Novignon, Eric Arthur.

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