Ghana’s Health Professions Regulatory Bodies Act, 2013 (Act 857) and its Adequacy in Governing Healthcare Delivery and Medical Negligence Issues

Abstract

Ghana instituted the Health Professions Regulatory Bodies Act, 2013 (Act 857) as landmark legislation seeking to enhance accountability, quality, and ethics in healthcare delivery through establishment of Regulatory Councils governing licensing, practice standards, continuing education and discipline across doctors, nurses, pharmacists and allied health professions. This analysis evaluates adequacies and shortcomings in Act 857’s frameworks to uphold standards of care and address medical negligence five years post-enactment. Progress is visible in standardized licensing protocols enabling oversight on practitioner competence via license issuance premised on education levels cleared by exams and checks. Channeling complaints through uniform procedures and linking license retention to ethical practice foster transparency. However, Act 857 falls short on comprehensively governing healthcare delivery systems issues beyond workforce such as infrastructure standards and access inequities exacerbating quality limitations and negligence risks. Narrow focus on professional self-regulation also constrains capacities to fully enforce broader quality benchmarks relating patient experience, technology support etc. Additionally, while intending to elevate conduct, complainant-driven procedures and restrictive litigation limitation periods instituted constrain efficacies in optimizing deterrence, accountability and access to justice for victims of medical negligence. Considerable legislative reforms are imperative to institute unified healthcare infrastructure standards and access equity provisions while rebalancing laws to enable equitable patient protections when harmed by substandard care. Implementation strategies also require realignment, beyond workforce to system-wide accountability, to actualize healthcare delivery enhancement goals via Act 857.