Ghana to set up national centre to manage emergency patients

Ghana is planning to set up a national command centre to manage emergency patients and guide them to hospitals with available beds, Prof. Titus Beyuo has revealed.

Prof. Beyuo, board chairman of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and Member of Parliament for Lambussie, spoke amid renewed concerns over overcrowding at the country’s major referral hospitals.

Speaking on the Joy Super Morning Show on Tuesday, March 24, he said the command centre will be part of a wider emergency patient management system the government is trying to operationalise to ease pressure on major referral facilities.

“We need the ambulance service to relocate their call centre to this national command centre. We need to get physicians and other people at the command centre who will do an online sorting of patients and redirect them,” he explained.

Under the new system, ambulance teams will no longer send patients automatically to Korle Bu or Komfo Anokye without knowing whether beds are available. Instead, ambulances will route cases based on real-time data, reducing delays that often worsen outcomes for critically ill patients.

Prof. Beyuo said every one of Ghana’s 200-plus ambulances must be connected to the platform before it can work effectively nationwide, noting that this process is still ongoing.

He explained that the command centre is expected to tackle one of the biggest challenges in Ghana’s emergency care: patients being rushed to already overcrowded hospitals because families and ambulance crews have no visibility on available beds elsewhere. “This arrangement should help distribute cases more rationally across facilities and improve survival chances,” he said.

Prof. Beyuo also praised the current Minister of Health for supporting the initiative, describing the minister as “very committed” to pushing the political and administrative momentum required to get the system off the ground.

No timeline has been given for when the centre will go live. Prof. Beyuo cautioned that the complexity of the infrastructure—spanning personnel, training, communication networks, and inter-agency coordination—makes it difficult to provide a firm launch date.

Once operational, the national command centre is expected to ensure critically ill patients reach hospitals with available capacity promptly, easing pressure on overcrowded facilities and strengthening Ghana’s emergency healthcare system.