In 2007, the MOH spent $1,203.546 for drugs and medicines; last year, it was cut to $696,382.57. And for this year its budget was down to only $671,366.79 2010, saving more than $500,000.
In 2008, because of the MOH’s limited budget, Kuartei decided cut down the hospital’s medicine and medical supplies inventory from 900 to 400. They decided on the minimum level of drugs, medical supplies and equipment that the hospital needed to maintain in order to operate, and stuck to it.
“What I did was I created this Minimum Inventory Project to determine the minimum essential drugs that are needed for life and death situations, and medicines that are still necessary although nobody will die if we don’t have them,” said Kuartei.
The list of medicines was cut down to 329 from 438 drugs. The MOH also looked at pre-qualifying medicine vendors and contractors.
“We select vendors on quality, cost effectiveness and prompt delivery,” said Kuartei. So instead of perpetual ordering of medicines, MOH now only just makes three big orders a year and two small ones. That means less cost of freight and cost of purchase. The number of orders that the hospital did in a year was cut down by 21 percent.
“Our cue time used to be four to six weeks, and now it’s only one week,” explained Kuartei. It was a matter of prioritizing what the hospital needs, he said.
Kuartei added that admissions in the hospital are increasing every year, and they projected that by 2014, admissions will go up to 4,000. In 1993, the hospital only recorded about 1,000 admissions.
“Our funding has not increased, yet we project that our admission rate will go up,” said Kuartei.
The increase in the number of admissions is due to the aging population. “As people get older they develop a lot of illnesses, most common are hypertension and diabetes,” explained Kuartei.
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