The Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has announced plans to introduce a real-time electronic bed management system to improve the allocation of hospital beds and reduce emergency patient rejections in Ghana.
The system is expected to provide health authorities with up-to-date information on bed availability across hospitals, helping medical teams identify facilities with available beds and improve the management of emergency cases.
Mr Akandoh announced the initiative during a working visit to the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, popularly known as Ridge Hospital, where a pilot version of the system was demonstrated.
He said the persistent “no bed syndrome” was not always caused by an absolute shortage of hospital beds but, in some cases, by the lack of reliable information on bed availability across health facilities.
“There are instances where there will be empty beds elsewhere and they go to another facility and they say the place is full.
It is just because we don’t have visibility on the number of beds we have in the whole country,” he explained.
The Minister said he had established a small committee to develop a centralised dashboard that would be installed in his office and other command centres to monitor bed availability across the country in real time.
The platform is also expected to track how long patients remain in emergency departments, enabling authorities to identify cases where patients have spent extended periods waiting for admission.
“For example, if somebody goes there and they say there’s no bed, I’ll be able to confirm from these screens whether or not there are no beds, whether or not a patient has been at emergency for more than 24 hours,” he said.
Mr Akandoh stressed that the initiative would not create additional physical beds but would help authorities make better use of existing hospital infrastructure.
“This will not necessarily add physical beds, but it will help us to manage what we have,” he said, describing suggestions that the system would directly increase bed numbers as propaganda.
Beyond the digital intervention, the Minister said the government was pursuing other measures to ease pressure on emergency departments, including plans to open up the emergency centre at the 37 Military Hospital and expand emergency units at major hospitals.
The facilities earmarked for expansion include Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Ridge Hospital and Tamale Teaching Hospital.
He said the combination of infrastructure expansion, technology and health sector reforms was intended to reduce emergency patient rejections and improve the chances of survival for people requiring urgent medical attention.
“There are reforms, expansions, using technology and all that to be able to deal with it, to minimize it so that at least if anybody is in an emergency situation, the probability of surviving becomes very, very high,” he stated.
On the implementation process, Mr Akandoh clarified that the demonstration at Ridge Hospital marked the first time the technical team had officially invited him to inspect its work, following the formation of the committee.
He disclosed that the pilot currently covers teaching hospitals, the Greater Accra Regional Hospital and the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC).
According to the Minister, the system will be extended to all regional hospitals after the pilot phase, before eventually being rolled out to district hospitals nationwide.
He commended the technical team for its work and said the Ministry of Health would push for a rapid nationwide rollout following the initial testing phase.
