Koforidua, April 26, GNA - The Eastern Regional Director of Health in charge of Clinical Care, Dr Wilfred Larbi-Addo, has called on managers of health institutions to grow to become mentors of their institutions and not just figure heads.

He said health managers needed to be seen to be championing quality care delivery in their institutions and pursuing genuine safety care for their patients and staff with programmes and activities aimed at gradually turning their institutions into centres of excellence. Dr Larbi-Addo was speaking at the opening of a one day conference on patients' safety and quality healthcare which was organized by Ghana Quality Organization (GQO) in collaboration with the Ghana Medical and Dental Council, Ghana Health Service and Food and Drugs Board at Koforidua.

The conference was attended by 120 people working in the health sector from all over the country.

Dr Larbi-Addo said despite the challenges facing health care, the Ghana Health Services continuously take measures to ensure quality of services at the hospitals through policies, personnel training, standardization and resource allocation.

Dr Bill White, consultant on quality system and strategies from the United States, called on Ghanaians not to allow their customary politeness to stop them from reporting to manufacturers problems that they see when using medical equipment. He said manufacturers of medical equipment must have a system to receive complaints from users of their equipment and they are under obligation to provide timely answer to all complaints and request on their equipment.

Dr White said when patients get hurt through the use of a medical equipment, the manufacturers of the equipment needed to be informed about it.

Lt Cdr Ernest Boateng-Okrah (RTD) of GQO called for the adoption of a system, the "Lean Six Sigma Methodologies," in the medical practice in the country to help reduce time that patients wait before seeing the doctor and help improve upon patients safety and quality health care. He explained that, the Lean Six Sigma Methodologies is used in industries and many establishments and could be adopted to health care.