SafeCare Country Director sets out four conditions for safer NCDs care

Reflecting on this year’s World Patient Safety Day, the SafeCare Country Director of PharmAccess, Bonifacia Benefo Agyei linked quality standards, outcome-based care, digital continuity and facility financing to a single test: whether people living with non-communicable diseases are measurably safer a year from now.

Speaking at the Ghana Health Service’s organized event to commemorate the World Patient Safety Day in Accra, the SafeCare Country Director, Bonifacia Benefo Agyei, cited a scenario of a woman diagnosed with hypertension in her forties, expecting to live with the condition for the next thirty to forty years, observing the hundreds of clinicians, prescriptions, repeated referrals and how she will often have to carry her own medical history in her memory, because her folder or medical information does not travel with her.

Bonifacia Benefo Agyei stated that the safety of such a woman is not in a single event, but “the sum of every consultation, every prescription, every hand-off,” therefore the subject of patient safety speaks directly to such a patient.

Globally, one in ten patients is harmed while receiving care and about half of that harm is preventable, according to the World Health Organisation. NCDs, including hypertension, diabetes, cancers and heart disease account for some 74 percent of deaths worldwide, and for more than four in ten deaths in Ghana.

She said, PharmAccess through its SafeCare program, will continue to work “alongside the Ghana Health Service, the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) and private providers so that quality care is owned by Ghanaian institutions and practiced by Ghanaian teams, not imported and not temporary.”

PharmAccess works to address points where NCD care breaks down

PharmAccess provides four distinct interventions to address points at which care for NCD patients tends to break down.

Through SafeCare, PharmAccess supports health institutions to assess their services against internationally recognised standards, identify gaps honestly and convert those findings into measurable improvement.

The work is delivered alongside the Ghana Health Service, the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) and private providers, with the explicit aim that quality is owned by Ghanaian institutions and practised by Ghanaian teams.

Globally, SafeCare has assessed thousands of facilities, 74% of which have demonstrated measurable quality improvement; systems supported through the methodology now serve approximately 9.6 million patient visits a month.

PharmAccess is also moving Ghana toward value-based care, a model that pays providers for the results patients get, rather than the number of procedures performed.

Working with the National Health Insurance Authority and CHAG, PharmAccess is evaluating the approach for hypertension and diabetes, tracking clinical outcomes, quality of life, patient experience and financial protection together rather than in isolation.

NkwaPlus, a digital health platform developed with a Tech partner Afrifanom and currently piloted with selected facilities and patient groups, addresses the interval between consultations.

It allows patients to share health information from home with their care teams, for ongoing monitoring and earlier response, so a rising risk reaches the care team before it becomes an emergency, a gap in which much preventable harm in chronic care occurs.

The Medical Credit Fund provides loans and technical assistance so that providers can act on their improvement priorities. This closes a practical loop: an assessment that identifies a risk is of limited value if the facility cannot finance the remedy.

To date the Fund has supported more than 2,100 healthcare providers and disbursed over 12,000 loans, with a 95% repayment rate; 30% of lending supports women-led health enterprises.

None of these four instruments work alone: standards identify the problem, financing fixes it, digital tools catch it early, and payment reform rewards the outcome. It is the combination that makes patients safer.

Benefo Agyei listed the four conditions to make patient safety and quality of care a daily reality; visible leadership, sustained investment, measurement that leads somewhere, patients as partners.

She said “patient safety must be a standing item at every level, from the Ministry to the ward”; “commitment must be visible in budgets, in staffing, in operational plans”; “assessments, peer reviews, incident reports and patient feedback matter only when each one ends in a named person, a date, and a change, and staff must be able to report harm without fear”; and “finally, people living with chronic conditions must be supported to understand their own care”.

She urged delegates to agree on a short list of actions, each with a responsible lead, a timeline, a budget and a measure of success, and proposed that, by the next commemoration, the sector should be able to state which actions were funded, which were implemented, and how patients were safer as a result.

On behalf of PharmAccess and its country director, Dr Maxwell Antwi, she reaffirmed the organisation’s readiness to provide technical support and help mobilise resources with partners.

“The strongest expression of our commitment will not be spoken here today,” she said. “It will be what changes in our facilities tomorrow.”