ASSESSING REVENUE MOBILIZATION AND EXPENDITURE IN DISTRICT HOSPITALS IN GHANA

Abstract

The study was on assessing revenue mobilization and expenditure in District Hospitals and the case study was on the Suntreso Government Hospital in Kumasi. Health institutions are financed through either private expenditure or public expenditure. The differences are subtle but become very important when developing countries are searching for ways to maintain or increase health service spending in a bid to provide quality healthcare for its citizens. In Ghana, public health facilities are mainly financed from three main sources, Government of Ghana Subvention (GOG), Donor Pool Fund (DPF), and Internally Generated Fund (IGF). Convenience sampling technique was used to select the Hospital while the accountant was selected using the purposive sampling. The study revealed that the main sources of funding for the Suntreso Government Hospital were from the Internally Generated Funds (IGF. The percentage contribution to revenue in terms of cash showed that IGF, DPF and GoG contributes 99.7%, 0.01% and 0.02% respectively to the total cash revenue of the health sector. Thus, IGF is the main source of funding in the health sector with very little contributions from the other sources. Expenditure items in the health sector are broadly categorized into three, namely; personnel emolument, administration and service delivery (services and drugs). The analyses of these expenditure items revealed that, of the total expenditure, service delivery (services and drugs) constitutes the biggest item followed by personnel emoluments and administration in that order. In conclusion, IGF the major source of funding keeps increasing. Also, about 90% of IGF was in the form of Health Insurance Revenue. Service delivery is the highest category of expenditure. It was recommended revenue officials be trained frequently and continuous dialogue must be ensured with the mutual health insurance to make prompt reimbursement to the hospital.