Financing Health Care in Ghana

Health Finance of Ghana

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
1. Financing health system...........................................................................................................1
2. Financial protection provided by health system to people suffering from financial
consequences of paying for health services.................................................................................2
3. Use of available resources more efficiently.............................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Health finance in Ghana is concerned with National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
Ghana is a set of small number of various African countries (Seddoh and Sataru, 2018) . It has its
saperate rules, legislations and significant relating to the revenues and program relating to health
insurance within the country. The present study shows an overview of the way in which the
health system of Ghana is being financed. Further, it provides information regarding how the
overall health system can be protected from numerous consequences of payment for health care
services. At the end, the assignment includes a discussion regarding availability of a range of
resources that are needed to be used in an efficient manner.
MAIN BODY
1. Financing health system
The profit and non- profit organization need finance to run the business via different
sources like public founding, donation, loan, borrowing etc. Ghana is one of the small country of
Africa. The health system of Ghana need finance to provide services to the patient like treatment
of disease, medicines, equipment etc. All the activities need finance to purchase the resources
and provides services to the country population. The various organization provide finance to the
health system like finance ministry, National health services system and NHIS to protect the
population from the various disease and provide the facilities to improving the function of health
system. Ghana health care require finance in the organization to purchase the medicine,
equipment, machinery etc. for providing health care services.
Ministry of finance provide the free health care services to the population of Ghana.
NHIS provide finance to the Ghana health service system to run the organization effectively and
efficiently and provide the financial resources. A proper financed organisation help in getting the
customer also and treat them with the sufficient resources. It also helps in sustainability of the
organization (Brugiavini and Pace, 2016). Sustainability of the Ghana health care system is
depended upon its services and product which can be fulfilled by the proper financing.
Private spending in Ghana is decreasing due to increase in the spending of government in
health care project by NHIS. The expanding health coverage insurance results to decreasing the
private spending (Browne and et.al., 2016). The private spending in Ghana contributed 2.3% in
GDP. The government finance help the organization in provide the health care services like free
check-ups, medicines, equipment, machinery, beds etc.
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The income level of Ghana is low because it is a small county of Africa with the low
population besides this Ghana is able to get the donor who donate funds to run the health care
sector and provide their valuable services. The support from various donor help them to provide
the product and services and pay the payment to the doctors and staff. WHO decide the criteria
of spending 15 to 20% in the organization. The financial protection is reducing below to the
average which create insufficiency of finance to the Ghana health care sector.
Social insurance also contribute in the finance of the company by providing them proper
finance to run the business. The insurance provides by the social insurance company protect the
patients from the future unexpected events. NHA helps to provide financial services to the Ghana
health care sector. It was founded in 2002 to set the benchmark for comparison of the
performance and improve the accuracy of the data. In 2009 Ghana spend in health sector and
contribute in GDP by 4.9 %. The contribution level of Ghana in GDP is below to its Income
level. The government and public spending help the Ghana health sector to collect the finance for
running the organization. The finance ministry, NHS, NHA, public donation help Ghana to get
the finance and improve the health sector by providing better services to the population. It also
helps them to improve the living standard and health of the country.
2. Financial protection provided by health system to people suffering from financial
consequences of paying for health services.
Health care services in Ghana
The major functions of Ghana is to provide effective health care services to a range of
people at the most economical price. Helping the people that belongs to the lower middle income
of the country by providing them health care services at the least price. Ghana also provides
health insurance services to people of several countries that are part of Ghana. It also provides
financial help to the insurer at the time of taking health care services for even some major health
issues.
Financial protection provided by Ghana:
As the major goals and objectives behind formation of Ghana is to provide financial
protection and the best level of consumer satisfaction to its customers (Makinen, Cali and
Derriennic, 2018). various funnctions performed by Ghana in order to provide financial
protection to its clients can be analysed as under:
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Raising revenue is one of the prime functions performed by Ghana. It leads in
development of effective strategies and plans in order to maintain sufficient financial resources
in order to provide the health care services to each of their client in the most effective way.
Pooling risk can also be termed as one of the core functions performed for providing
financial protection to their clients. Ghana provides health insurance services to their clients. It
leads in creation of an insurance pool through which it manage its revenues in order to protect its
clients and provide them a quality of health care services at the most economical price.
As per the reports of NHIS, the Ghana has covered 34% of the population. NHIS leads in
covering 37% of out of pocket expenditures of Ghana by taking burden of approximately 97% of
diseases. Further, it has also developed a range of strategies plans and procedures in order to
improve health financing system of Ghana.
In addition, Ghana has also developed a range of legislations in context to earmark a huge
amount of funds for providing health care services to the customers. The legislation helps in
maintaining sufficient amount of funds and other financial services to Ghana in order to serve
people who covers under the category of the most vulnerable and lower income.
Furthermore, as per the policies of NHIS, 30 to 40% of its total spending is concerns with
providing health care services in Ghana. NHIS made three major surveys in this regard namely
Ghana living standard survey, Ghana demographic and health survey and Citizen's assessment
survey. These surveys helped Ghana in determining the actual need of finance for providing
health care services to people of Ghana along with providing them financial protection.
In this regard, it can be said that the Ghana provides financial protection to its population
and provide them quality of health care services as well.
3. Use of available resources more efficiently.
Resources available in Ghana:
In Ghana, the following resources available for the purpose of providing health care
services to its population:
Revenue resources: This are one of the major sources of Ghana health services.
Revenues of NHIS is being used as substantial financial resources in Ghana. By using these
financial resources, Ghana become able to reduce its barriers of lack of finance for maintaining
smoothness in the health care services to its clients. Inefficient use of this resource may result in
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increasing the probability of insufficiency and interrupting the health care services to its
customers as well.
Human resources: It refers to a large amount of doctors, nurses and other official staffs
employed by Ghana in order to provide health care services to people of Ghana. It needs to
appoint more professional doctors and nurses so as to ensure providing quality of services to
their clients. In addition, development of effective strategies and plans in order to improve their
efficiencies in maintaining quality of services to be provided to its customers. Inefficient use of
its human resources may lead in providing reduction in the quality of services provided to them.
Health infrastructure: It is the next most important resource held by the Ghana. In order
to improve efficiency of working and maintaining effectiveness in providing quality of services
to their clients, efficient maintenance of overall health infrastructure is a major task for Ghana.
Inefficient use in the overall health infrastructure would have a direct impact over the
development of Ghana health services and quality of health services as well.
In this regard, it can be said that there are various sources available in the Ghana in order
to utilise them for providing effective health care services to population of Ghana. Each of them
are needed to be utilised efficiently. Inefficient use of these resources would result in reduction
in the quality of health care services provided to them.
CONCLUSION
From the study of above project, it can be said that Ghana is concerned with providing
effective health care services to majorly poor and lower middle income group of people. NHIS,
and government grants are major sources of finance of Ghana. In addition, it also provides
several facilities to its customers such as health insurance, providing health care services at the
most economical price, etc. It leads in providing financial protection to its customers. In addition,
the study has also concluded that there are various resources available for Ghana that are needed
to be utilised in the most efficient manner in order to maintaining quality of services provided to
its customers.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Seddoh, A. and Sataru, F., 2018. Mundane? Demographic characteristics as predictors of
enrolment onto the National Health Insurance Scheme in two districts of Ghana. BMC
health services research, 18(1), p.330.
Makinen, M., Cali, J. and Derriennic, Y., 2018. Health Financing Strategies.
Brugiavini, A. and Pace, N., 2016. Extending health insurance in Ghana: effects of the National
Health Insurance Scheme on maternity care. Health economics review, 6(1). p.7.
Browne, J.L., and et.al., 2016. Health insurance determines antenatal, delivery and postnatal
care utilisation: evidence from the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveillance
data. BMJ open, 6(3). p.e008175.
Online
Global Health Action. 2018. [Online]. Available through :
<http://indepth-network.org/sites/indepth.mrmdev.co.uk/files/2017/articles/OOP%20in
%20Ghana.pdf>.
Health Financing in Ghana. 2018. [Online]. Available through :
<http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documents/s20302en/s20302en.pdf>.
Health financing system. 2019. [Online]. Available through :
<http://www.aho.afro.who.int/profiles_information/index.php/Ghana:Health_financing_s
ystem>
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