SafeCare Country Director sets out four conditions for safer NCDs care
Reflecting on this year’s World Patient Safety Day, the SafeCare Country Director of PharmAccess, Bonifacia Benefo Agyei linked quality standards, outcome-based care, digital continuity and facility financing to a single test: whether people living with non-communicable diseases are measurably safer a year from now. Speaking at the Ghana Health Service’s organized event to commemorate the […]
In her address at the Ghana Health Service's commemoration of World Patient Safety Day in Accra, SafeCare Country Director for PharmAccess, Bonifacia Benefo Agyei, outlined four crucial conditions necessary for safer care of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Drawing on the hypothetical case of a woman with hypertension, Agyei emphasized that a patient's safety is not the result of a single event but rather the cumulative effect of every consultation, prescription, and hand-off.
Globally, one in ten patients experience harm during care, with half of that harm being preventable, according to the World Health Organisation. NCDs, such as hypertension, diabetes, cancers, and heart disease, account for 74 percent of global deaths, and over 40 percent in Ghana. Agyei explained that PharmAccess, through its SafeCare program, collaborates with the Ghana Health Service, the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), and private providers to ensure quality care is owned and practiced by Ghanaian institutions and teams.
The program offers four interventions to address points where NCD care breaks down. First, it supports health institutions in assessing their services against internationally recognized standards, identifying gaps, and converting findings into measurable improvements. Second, it promotes value-based care, a model that rewards providers for patient outcomes rather than the number of procedures performed.
Third, it utilizes the NkwaPlus digital health platform, which enables patients to share health information remotely with their care teams for ongoing monitoring and earlier intervention. Lastly, it provides the Medical Credit Fund, which offers loans and technical assistance to facilitate providers' ability to implement improvement priorities.
These four components work together to create a comprehensive approach to patient safety and quality care. Agyei highlighted the importance of visible leadership, sustained investment, measurement leading to change, and involving patients as partners in the process. She urged attendees to commit to a list of actions with clear responsible parties, timelines, budgets, and measures of success, aiming to report on the outcomes by the next commemoration.
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