Anambra: Health facilities operating below standards to pay N200,000 for re-accreditation
By Ozo Ray, Awka
As part of efforts to save lives as well as guarantee quality healthcare for Ndi-Anambra, the government of Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo will in no distant time set up Anambra State Health Facility Monitoring Accreditation Agency to ensure that health facilities in the state operated in line with generally acceptable professional standards.
The State Commissioner for Health Dr. Ben Obidike gave the hint while playing host to the House of Assembly Committee on Health at the conference hall of the Ministry of Health secretariat complex Awka.
The hint which was his response to a salient issue raised by one of the committee members Hon. Timothy Ifedioramma regarding healthcare providers shortchanging ASHIA enrollees by allegedly asking them to choose between their own drugs and ASHIA drugs upon treatments, noted that henceforth government would ensure that such shoddy practices didn’t take place as government was coming up with a bill to be forwarded to the House of Assembly for the establishment of the aforementioned agency.
Obidike explained that the agency, when it is created would help to monitor the services health facilities provide to Ndi-Anambra, stressing that the bill would help to ensure that hospitals were duly certified and licensed to operate in Anambra state.
He said when the bill is passed into law, it would guarantee quality assurance and eliminate quacks in Anambra state, just as he also disclosed that all health facilities operating in the state would be uploaded in the ministry’s website with their certificates and licenses while government would commence accreditation of the facilities before the end of this year.
The Commissioner also stated that government would pay unscheduled visits to hospitals and health facilities across the state to ensure requisite operational standards as facilities operating below standards would be blacklisted and affected facilities would pay a penalty fee of N200,000 each for re-acrceditation while toll free phone numbers would be made available for people to call and lodge complaints where they are not satisfied with services provided by the health facilities.
