Ghana’s Healthcare Leader Nyaho Medical Center is Opening First Satellite Clinic in Accra

Interview with Dr Elikem Tamaklo, MD of Nyaho Medical Center

Can you give us your general evaluation of the healthcare sector in Ghana? What have been the latest developments?

The general overview of the Ghanaian healthcare industry is a fairly positive one in the sense that there is a lot more awareness of the need for quality improvement and better accessibility to healthcare. In the private sector, there has been a lot more mobilisation in the last few years as we now have greater diversity of international and local players trying to solve the issues that we face. There is still the need for infrastructural development and a growing need for IT technology in terms of electronic medical records, data-driven solutions and total care optimisation. I also believe that there is a lot more ongoing conversation about the need for public private partnerships and I believe that this will ultimately be the key to sustainable improvement. The healthcare challenges in Ghana are multiple and deeply integrated, and finding solutions will require the mobilisation of multiple stakeholders working together. Recent infrastructural changes have occurred at the district level but there is a need for more fully resourced beds and the government cannot be relied on to do everything. That is where private hospitals like ours are looking at filling that gap.

Nyaho Medical Center is Ghana’s best medical center. What is Nyaho’s ultimate objective when it comes to your vision of healthcare services and medical care in Ghana in general?

That is a very good question. Our vision really is to be Africa’s most trusted name in healthcare, which is extremely ambitious but we believe that it is possible as trust is really about the human connection and the ability to meet the need at the time. Our objective is to build trust between our patients and the Nyaho healthcare system by ensuring that we consistently deliver care at an international standard of care such that Ghanaians need not go to countries such as India, the USA and the UK for quality healthcare at a significant cost.  At the core of our mission is a desire to transform lives by surpassing expectations in healthcare by leveraging innovative solutions, a disciplined approach and a focus on the needs of our patients and their families.

Our objective is to build trust between our patients and the Nyaho healthcare system by ensuring that we consistently deliver care at an international standard of care such that Ghanaians need not go to countries such as India, the USA and the UK for quality healthcare at a significant cost.

How has Nyaho evolved over the past two years?

I am very proud of the team at Nyaho because we have made a lot of changes over the last two years. We implemented our hospital information system where we moved all of our patient records to electronic medical records. We implemented a picture archiving and communications system, so all of our radiology is connected and available remotely. Our doctors in the wards and clinics can all have access to the patients’ imaging, which in our region was a big leap. We have done a lot of infrastructural changes and planning a lot of expansion projects and I am very pleased to say that we will be opening our first satellite clinic in about 2 months. Ultimately we want to meet our patients at their point of need, and not only provide solutions, but also equip and empower them to make informed decisions about their lives.

Where will the new satellite clinic be located?

It will be located at the central business district of Accra, which is Accra Central. A significant portion of our patients come from corporate institutions who provide healthcare for all their employees and their families. A large number of these companies such as the big banks like Barclays and the telecommunication companies have their headquarters based in this location. We wanted to improve accessibility for our patients whilst reducing the hidden costs such as time away from the office stuck in traffic, fuel costs, missed appointments etc. As healthcare funding is changing, with corporate accounts and insurance as the major modes of payment, there is a lot more responsibility on the employer to reduce rising healthcare costs whilst ensuring that their staff and their people are healthy and well balanced.

Can you summarise how you stand out from other healthcare providers in Accra? Also, there is the newly-reconstructed Ridge Hospital, will that be competition for you? How do you reach out to the most possible patients out there?

We try not to compare ourselves to the government because our value proposition is different and ultimately there needs to be a synergy between the public and the private. We are very happy to work with the government sector in areas where we don’t have the requisite competencies and this works the other way as well especially when we are able to offer faster turnaround times and can offer a more personalised approach.

But there is no denying that competition ultimately helps to drive quality for the patient, and we are embracing that challenge. We know that our patients value their time and so we are working on further reducing our waiting times, optimising our process flows, and delivering a ‘one-stop shop’ model that delivers robust, effective and safe care, so having the group specialist care at the Centre is really important for us. We have about 50 specialists in different fields and they are able to offer holistic care here. If you come to see a doctor you will most likely be referred in-house. This is still very unique in Ghana and is down to our emphasis on family physicians to coordinate care for the patient across multiple services; this is primarily based on relationship and an in-depth understanding of the patient and their family. This year, we are proud to say that we shall be the first private hospital to be training family physicians under the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons which is a significant achievement for us and speaks of our pioneering culture. All of this positions us, especially in the private sector, as a leader in quality care at a comprehensive level.

How about international partnerships?

We are very proud of the partnerships we have been developing. We value our local partnerships as we believe that there is much to be gained in collaboration within our local community. Internationally, we have been developing a partnership with the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the UK and held a joint Medical Symposium in March 2017 on the topic of Quality Improvement engaging key healthcare stakeholders from the Ministry of Health, NHIA, regulatory bodies, public and private institutions amongst others. This is critical component of our strategy as we look to address more complex areas such as  critical and emergency care. In Ghana, we woefully do not have enough doctors and nurses who are trained in these fields and we definitely see for ourselves a need to develop these partnerships to bridge the skills gap in Ghana.

What is your strategy for 2017/2018?

Our focus at Nyaho has always been on the patient, but we realise it is not enough to talk about the patient; we also have to look at their families, and that is where in terms of our methodology we are doing a lot of design thinking, reviewing all our services again from the perspective of the patient and the family. In healthcare, we are dealing with very traumatic and emotional experiences all the time and so our teams are thinking about how we can make our environment more healing and more conducive to families, so that the experience can be positive even though it is very trying. Thus, we will be innovating and leveraging technology to find solutions whilst still having a human centred approach as well. This will help us in achieving our goals.

When we meet again in two years’ time, where would you like to be?

One key thing that we have done this year is to focus on our communication. We realised we had to rebrand. We knew that for a 47 years old organisation there was a need to communicate about who we were and what made us different. Because of that, rebranding helped us position ourselves and reflect upon where we were moving towards in terms of our future and keeping that bridge between our heritage, what brought us here, and where we are trying to get to.

In two years’ time, we would like to have a few more successful sites and also a bigger organisation, one that is doing a lot more complex services. We would be especially proud to deliver consistent value to our patients in a holistic manner.  In two years’ time we should be able to do that.

Our team is so important, we can’t do anything without the people who work here with us, our nurses, doctors, cleaners… it is really about our holistic approach, we say that we are all specialists working for the patient. That was our key message during our rebrand and we hope to live up to that promise.

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