Conflict of interest | Physician-owned Health facilities in Ghana

The health sector is critical to the success of any economy. It also promotes national progress. In developing countries, healthcare and life expectancy are becoming increasingly essential in determining economic success. Increased life expectancy leads to increased economic growth, (M. Cervellati and U. Sunde (2011). Unfortunately, in underdeveloped countries, the health sector is not always at its best. In Ghana, the government administers around 78 per cent of the health industry (Oxford Business Group, 2021), while the private sector handles the remainder. Nevertheless, some of these private health sectors are physician-owned, and this paper will discuss the conflict of interests in the management of physician-owned health centres. We will explore the laws, if any exist, that address these conflicts of interest. We will discuss proposed policies that can be put in place to curb and manage these conflicts of interest as well

Due to the low capacity of facilities compared to the volume of people needing them, almost all hospitals are always overburdened. The scarcity of healthcare drives up its demand and the private hospitals charge a premium for people needing their services. The conflict of interest that arises here is the redirection of patients from state-owned hospitals to physician-owned private hospitals. The thing is, the government still employ these physicians even though these physicians own their private clinics, There is no policy or law to check and bar these physicians from ending up in the public sector, and this is largely due to the insufficient physicians available. Moreover, almost all sought-after specialists have established their private practices. Therefore, refusing to employ them would mean refusing to employ the best in the workforce.

Unfortunately, the referral procedure by the Ministry of Health doesn’t have the policy to check for conflict of interest when a patient is being referred. Though referral records are taken and kept, the policy itself doesn’t have anything written on referrals to clinics for conflict of interest. This means doctors can refer patients to themselves in their private hospitals with ease without facing any hindrance or the law afterwards. Sometimes, these doctors do not refer the patients through the proper procedure. They sometimes refer a patient to their practice by word of mouth. If a doctor is off duty on a specific date, he or she can request that the patient meet him or her at his or her private hospital for further examination.

I believe policies should be put in place, and referrals should only be done if necessary. Also, any doctor with a conflict of interest should not be allowed to authorise referrals to his facility. These should be frowned on and punished. That said, the government should either improve the public health sector to ensure that it can accommodate a large number of people or try and regulate the private health sector to prevent unethical referrals and competition.

References

Cervellati, M., & Sunde, U. (2011). Life expectancy and economic growth: the role of the demographic transition. Journal of Economic Growth, 16(2), 99–133. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41486924

Ghana’s Growing Middle Class Presents Opportunities In Private Health Care | Ghana 2019 | Oxford Business Group. (2019, March 1). Oxford Business Group. https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/overview/finger-pulse-improvements-made-universal-coverage-growth-middle-class-boosts-opportunities-private.

Ministry of Health (n.d) Retrieved from https://www.moh.gov.gh/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Referral-Policy-Guidelines.pdf