Hospital Financing in Rural Ghana: Insight from Practitioners

Poverty magnifies the need for health care while at the same time shrinking the capacity to finance it. The purpose of this study was to identify the sources of finance available to hospitals in Ghana and challenges they face in access finance from these sources. Goaso Municipal hospital was purposively selected for the study. Questionnaire was used to solicit information from the respondents while descriptive statistics aided the data analysis. The study found that government subvention, National Health Insurance Claims and internally generated funds are the main sources of finance to the hospital. The study also revealed that the key challenges faced by the hospital with regards to financing are the delays in accessing National Health Insurance claim and government subventions. It is therefore recommended that National Health Insurance should reimburse the hospital promptly to improve the health care delivery. Moreover, the government must separate hospital financing from public spending via earmarked budgets to avoid annual public spending negotiations for government subventions.