The Minister of Health, Hon. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has accused his predecessor, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, of overpaying the contractor responsible for Ghana’s controversial Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) project.
Recently appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Minister described what he called “serious irregularities” in the execution of the contract, warning the former minister to desist from public commentary on the matter while investigations and audits continue.
“Mr. Chairman, today I woke up to a response from the immediate past Minister. If anything at all, he should be keeping quiet. It’s not in his interest to be talking, because he overpaid the contractor”
Hon. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, Ministry of Health
According to the Health Minister, the Lightwave contractor received over US$77 million – more than 70 percent of the total contract sum – despite completing less than half of the planned health facility connections.
“This is not a pre-payment procedure – you get paid as and when you have executed the job. So, if you have been paid more than the work you have done, you have been overpaid,” he told the Committee, emphasizing that funds for the LHIMS project were to be released strictly based on work executed.
Hon. Akandoh revealed that as of December 2024, reconciliation records showed an unutilized advance of $10.6 million yet to be expended by the vendor, despite extensive payments already made. He stated that the former minister had acknowledged payments totaling about $77 million, with $23 million outstanding, underscoring the scale of the irregularities.
Performance Gaps and System Breakdown
The PAC hearing follows months of national concern over the failure of the LHIMS system, which has disrupted electronic record management across public health facilities. Hon. Akandoh disclosed that a forensic audit had uncovered a performance gap of over $18 million, citing ”discrepancies in hardware, software, and system integration.”
According to the Minister, the audit findings confirmed that the vendor failed to meet contract deliverables, connecting only 450 out of 950 facilities by the contract’s final extension date of December 31, 2024. “Clearly, nobody needs to tell you that the company underperformed,” he remarked.
Hon. Akandoh noted that the contract, signed in 2019 at a cost of $100 million, was extended twice due to delays but yielded little progress. The breakdown of the system, he explained, had forced hospitals in several regions to revert to manual record-keeping, significantly slowing patient processing and service delivery.
In response, the Health Minister announced a four-week plan to restore the country’s electronic healthcare system. He said the government has procured a new platform, the Ghana Healthcare Information Management System (GHIMS), to replace the troubled LHIMS platform.
“In the next one week, we are going to begin with the teaching hospitals, the regional hospitals, and the highly populaKPMG Partner Urges Transparency, Accountability to Strengthen Ghana’s Energy Sector
Hon. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, Ministry of Health
ted district hospitals – to roll them over onto the system. The medical records of Ghanaians would never go back to the manual way. We are moving forward – responsibly, confidently, and decisively”
He outlined that the migration would continue in phases, with all clinics, health centres, and CHPS compounds expected to be onboarded within a month.
Okoe Boye Refutes Claims
Meanwhile, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye has rejected the allegations of overpayment and mismanagement. Speaking in an earlier interview, the former Health Minister insisted that Lightwave was a Ghanaian-owned company and that the system remained under the control of the Ministry of Health (MoH), not any foreign entity.
He accused his successor of misleading the public and warned that the new system being introduced was linked to a rival company long interested in the contract. “You have a situation where the government of Ghana, through the Minister of Health, is saying that they’ve done an audit… yet the minister has unilaterally gone to engage another vendor,” Dr. Okoe Boye said.
He further argued that almost half of all hospitals had already been connected to the Lightwave system, and changing platforms midway would jeopardize the nation’s digital health infrastructure.
But the Health Minister maintained that the government was justified in assuming full control of the LHIMS system, especially after the vendor refused to grant government access to the server and data.
“It is a national security threat for Ghana’s healthcare data to be handed to an individual,” Mr. Akandoh said, reaffirming that the Ministry was collaborating with the National Information Technology Agency and security agencies to build a fully sovereign system, assuring that new measures would ensure transparency and state ownership of healthcare data.
As both current and former ministers of health trade accusations over accountability and system ownership, the Ministry of Health insists that its priority remains the protection of patient data and the efficient restoration of digital healthcare services nationwide.
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