The Ghana Health Service (GHS), in partnership with PharmAccess Ghana, is advancing accessibility to high-quality and safe healthcare in the Savannah and Bono East regions to attain the Universal Health Coverage agenda. Under the leadership of Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General of the GHS, the Service has been working closely with PharmAccess Ghana, an international health-focused non-governmental organisation, to introduce the SafeCare Quality Improvement programme on a smaller scale in the two regions. It was intended to evaluate the adoption and integration of SafeCare's standards and quality improvement methodology in the GHS settings and systems to bring changes and improvement in healthcare delivery. Forty healthcare facilities from the two regions, including district hospitals, polyclinics and health centres were piloted. The facilities were assessed at the baseline using the International Quality External Evaluation Association (IEEA) accredited standards, followed with a series of qua lity improvement activities designed to support the facilities in implementing changes to improve performance. They were also supported with a digital application for accessing supportive documents and tracking the activities, as well as other capacity-building approaches to ensure the development of internal capacities for continuous improvement. More than 100 smaller healthcare facilities (CHPS compounds) were introduced to a self-administering assessment tool for the providers to evaluate their performance and receive improvement recommendations for implementation. In September 2023, Dr Kuma-Aboagye embarked on a supportive supervision to selected facilities in the two regions that were implementing the SafeCare programme to identify the progress made as well as ascertain the implementation challenges. Having been inspired by the successful adoption of the programme within the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), he extended an invitation to Dr Peter Yeboah, the Executive Director of the Assoc iation, to bring on board his experiences to enhance the programme. Dr Kuma-Aboagye underscored the importance of stakeholders being deliberate about quality improvement, emphasising the pivotal role of leadership, attitude, and investment for a successful programme implementation. He urged the leadership of the facilities and the regional health directorates to sustain the programme since quality improvement had come to stay. Dr Peter Yeboah, the Executive Director of CHAG, took the opportunity to share his extensive experiences with respect to the SafeCare Quality Improvement Programme with the leadership of the regional health directorates and the management and staff of the healthcare facilities, highlighting the progress made. He proposed healthy competition and collaboration between GHS and CHAG in pursuit of universal health coverage through equitable and high-quality healthcare access. The GHS healthcare facilities that were visited reported marked improvements in the overall quality of care sinc e the start of the SafeCare programme in 2019, Dr Peter Yeboah said. 'These improvements are a testament to the effectiveness of the SafeCare methodology in enhancing healthcare service delivery,' he added. Dr Maxwell Antwi, the Country Director of PharmAccess, said the importance of government and private sector collaboration to establish a resilient, high-quality healthcare delivery system could not be over-emphasised. He stressed the urgency of creating a healthcare system that ensured adequate care for patients without the need for physical activation. Source: Ghana News Agency