The goal of the NCEN is to reduce the prevalence of blindness and visual impairment in North Ghana, especially among low income families. The NCEN is established according to a set of non-negotiable core values that guide the business model and serve as its ethical and financial foundation. These values translate into services that include supply and demand side interventions, which make the NCEN unique in Ghana and ensure that the center is financially sustainable in the long-term.
This NCEN approach is based upon the Aravind Eye Care System (India) model that provides eye care to all members in the community regardless of their ability to pay. The profit generated from the paying patients is used to cross-subsidize and fund free care for the poor, including babies and children. The model has gained significant popularity, now representing a substantial share of eye surgeries in India, and is rapidly spreading throughout the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
ARCHITECHTURAL DESIGN: Joyce Damah – ARHSTRUX Properties
We are working with experienced hospital planners to conceive eco-friendly, cost-effective building designs for our facilities.
The most important factor to the success of the NCEN is its self-sustaining financing model. The NCEN uses differential pricing – a sliding price scale that allows patients to pay for services according to their financial ability. This model ensures that patients maintain their autonomy and dignity – which are vital to increasing utilization.
The quality and type of essential eye care services are the same for all patients regardless of what they pay. Essential care includes care for nonsurgical eye diseases, cataract surgery, trauma surgery, glaucoma care including surgery, and laser, The only difference in pricing is for “luxury” services such as phacoemulsification cataract surgery, special implants, plastic surgery, accommodations and food.
To keep costs low and improve patient accessibility, all key services are conducted during the initial visit, from patient registration to consultation, to investigations, to surgery. Cataract surgery is cheaper in an outpatient setting than with an overnight stay.
The provision of Intraocular Lens (IOL) and other surgical supplies at a low-price point for the Ghanaian population is key to the financial sustainability of the center. The NCEN has identified a supplier that will provide these at affordable prices.
An optical shop will be co-located with the clinic which will provide prescriptions and eye glasses for patients making it accessible and affordable.
Dr. Judith Simon is a dedicated U.S. trained ophthalmologist, who has been working with a small but motivated team in Tamale since 2013. She has 35 years of clinical and surgical experience, and 22 years of experience in outreach surgery to developing countries. She was the head of the Eye Unit at the Tamale Teaching Hospital for 12 years where she was training eye nurses, optometrists, medical students, house officers, physician assistants and residents. She also served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Development Studies in Tamale, Ghana.
The NCEN is dedicated to training local medical providers to create a sustainable network of doctors, nurses, and optometrists who will provide care for their own population for the future.
The pool of potential patients who could benefit from eye care services is very large in North Ghana, but they will be unaware of the new services at the NCEN. These potential patients are referred to as “non-customers”. To increase demand for services, the NCEN team makes frequent trips to the rural areas to identify “non-customers” and inform them about the clinic, its services, and especially the free or low cost of care.
The main aim of the social marketing campaign is to increase demand for services at the NCEN. By raising awareness about the new services and payment structure, more people will seek care at the NCEN. This is achieved through a combination of direct outreach in person by NCEN staff on a regular basis, dissemination of marketing materials in targeted communities, and public service announcements (PSA) on the radio which we use heavily among the local population in Northern Ghana. The PSAs and direct community outreach include information to improve overall health literacy among the population. It cover’s vision, nutrition, and prevention of blindness as well as the new services and costs of treatment at the NCEN.
Bi-weekly screening for cataract, glaucoma, refractive error and for other eye diseases is conducted in Tamale and in the rural communities of North Ghana.
It is estimated that 20% of the population in Northern Ghana is not yet registered with the NHIS.
