Medical Directors Canvass Healthcare Reforms

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The Guild of Medical Directors (GMD) at the weekend canvassed for a workable healthcare reform in the country, noting that it was long overdue.

The guild made the call in a communiqué it issued at the end of its inaugural Business and Leadership Summit in Abuja, saying for success to be recorded in the country’s health insurance act (NHIA), the private sector should be effectively involved.

In a communiqué by its President, Dr. Raymond Kuti, the guild said there was the need for the federal government to review the issue of partnership and actively lease some of its facilities to be managed by the private sector under the public private partnership  model, saying 70 percent of healthcare providers are in the private sector.

Rather than continuous engagement in medical tourism by Nigerians, the communiqué said the federal government should publicly advocate the use of Nigerian private hospitals with the innovative services that they go abroad to access.

The guild canvassed an urgent constitution of the working committee for the continuous and permanent communication between the Federal Ministry of Health and the private sector with the representatives of GMD as key members.

“The way we want PPP to run is for the government to give backing to the policies that will allow and approve that those doctors in medical practices in the private sector can partner and integrate government hospitals.

“Lagos state is already doing that and there are hospitals in Lagos in which the sub services are being ceded to doctors in the private sector. They run them for it, the agreement is there and I think this is what we can replicate all over the country.

“70 percent of doctors work in the private sector. So, their skills should be used in government hospitals as well, which is the PPP segment the group is interested in.

“We have policymakers, let us sit down regularly and see how these things will work. Let us know the government policies and see how we in the private sector as doctors can use them.

“Not every hospital should have its own theatre. If the government hospital has, for example, seven theatres, we have doctors in private hospitals that can take their patients there and even operate on government patients round the clock.

“So doctors in private hospitals can then be using or utilising government’s infrastructure to give the best to the patients at affordable prices.’’

He also said the guild, which was being repositioned to remain a strong partner in the Nigerian health care sector, was wholly complimentary to the public health sector and comparatively better equipped to deliver quality health care.