There’s an increasingly alarming number of unqualified practitioners involved in irrational patient diagnosis in various hospitals across the country, Director of Claims at the National Health Insurance Authority, Dr. Lydia Dsane-Selby has revealed.

Dr. Selby made this revelation during the KN Tamaklo Medical Symposium held in Accra Friday March 10.

Speaking on the key health problems facing the health sector, she said that many of the claim forms received monthly from service providers have wrong diagnosis coupled with wrong prescriptions admitted by some medical practitioners. In other instances she said, the complaints expressed by the patients don’t correspond with the final diagnosis made.

“There are people with stethoscopes round their neck and in a white coat, as soon as you’re dressed like that, everybody calls you doctor and you have the right to start giving injections and what have you….you have somebody who came to the clinic, normal temperature, it’s a child, and the person examining wrote; stable and not pale and yet the diagnosis was septicaemia and severe anaemia with all the drugs that go with it”, she said.

She cited another incident where a person complained of body pains and without any examination was diagnosed with Bronchitis and Malaria and given all the drugs along with it.

Dr. Selby maintained that the absence of adequate medical personnel in the sector should not be enough justification to accommodate unqualified persons who pose as doctors.

“We all know that Ghana lacks the requisite numbers, but that doesn’t mean you should compromise care and have completely unqualified staff looking after patients”.

Dr. Selby said that the practice is an indictment on the country’s reputation adding that this though may have been ongoing overtime, has come to the limelight with the advent of health insurance and the concern about payments.