The Bank of Ghana has finally inaugurated the 65-bed capacity hospital located at Cantonments, Accra, to provide quality health care to the public, especially, in this era of pandemic where health facilities are over-burdened with many cases.
Designed and built by the Universal Hospital Group (UHG), the €85 million health facility is equipped with all relevant modern machines and equipment that will to provide world class service delivery to patients. These include a state-of-the-art intensive care unit, comfortable airconditioned general wards and exclusive executive suites, bright child-friendly paediatric ward, safe, secure maternity unit and neonatal ICU, state-of-the-art theatres, 24/7 emergency unit and ambulance services, among others.
Some of the services The Bank Hospital will provide include laboratory, pharmacy, urology, paediatrics, obstetrics, and gynaecology, ear and throat (ENT), orthopedic, theatre services, radiology, ophthalmology and cardiology.
Speaking at the inauguration, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Yedu Addison, said to ensure that the administration of the hospital does not interfere with the bank’s core duty of ensuring price and financial stability to foster growth, management of the hospital has been entrusted to a private company.
“In as much as we acknowledged the usefulness of these ongoing projects to support health care and recreational facilities of bank staff, the Board and the Management recognised the conflicting roles in pursuing the core mandate of the Bank, which is to ensure price and financial stability to foster growth, and effectively managing a hospital.
Consequently, the Board and Management decided to carefully craft a path that would ensure sustainably managing this Hospital to best serve the interest of the Bank and the country at large. Therefore, the Board, having recognized that the Bank lacked the expertise to effectively manage a hospital complex, initiated a process to partner the private sector to effectively and sustainably manage The Bank Hospital,” he said.
He further stated that The Bank Hospital will operate as a commercial entity open to the public in order to ensure it is run and maintained in a sustainable manner.
“On the Business model guiding the operations of a hospital, the implementation Committee recommended that The Bank Hospital should be set up as a commercial entity operating as a general hospital, to provide world-class OPD services, diagnostic services, and medical urology.
The Committee recommended that the Hospital needed to be operated via a multi-disciplinary teamwork approach with the clinical business units at the OPD being allowed to generate its own income to meet some of its operational costs,” he said.
Also speaking at the event, Chairman of the Council of State, Nana Otuo Siriboe II, Juabenhene, lauded the successive management of the central bank for not following the usual practice of abandoning projects started by another administration, and seeing to it that national interest is upheld by ensuring The Bank Hospital is fully operational.
He urged both the bank and UHG to uphold a high maintenance culture in order to keep the beautiful edifice of the hospital and to ensure heath care is administered under strict hygienic conditions.
Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, also reiterated government’s commitment to support The Bank Hospital live up to its mandate of providing world class health care to citizens. He added that government is still on course to honour its promise of Agenda 111 – a project that seeks to build 111 health facilities across the country.
