Restoring confidence in the Nigerian healthcare delivery system: essentials of effective health records services

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Nigerian healthcare delivery system has faced a lot of challenges ranging from underfunding,inadequate health workforce, poor service delivery, ineffective health information system, poor access toessential medicines to poor leadership and management. The ineffective health information system in Nigeriamight not be unconnected with the disjointed health records management systems in our health facilities. Thisfactors no doubt, are responsible for inaccessibility of patients health records on point-of-care leading to longerpatient waiting time and sometimes cause preventable deaths. Loss of patients’/public’s confidence in theNigerian healthcare delivery system can better be imagined among other clinical challenges in the systems.Restoring patients’ confidence through the instrumentality of effective health records service may be the steppingstone and the right step in the right direction. This paper examined restoring confidence in the Nigerian healthcaredelivery system and the essentials of effective health records services. Methods/Design: This paper reviewedvarious opinions of the scholars as it affect the Nigerian healthcare delivery system, essentials of effective healthrecords services and how to restore the confidence in the system. Results: It was discovered that Nigerianhealthcare delivery system is not properly organized and coordinated; it lacks efficiency and effective servicesthereby causing loss of confidence. Restoring the confidence in the sector is the responsibility of everybody andeffective health records service can be accomplished when various healthcare providers who are the contributorsto health records accord it with the required high priority and place it in the rightful position of importance itreally occupied in the sector. Conclusion: The paper concluded that everything being equal, it is essential to havean effective health records services institutionalized in our healthcare facilities as one of the key drivers of quality healthcare services to restore the confidence in Nigerian healthcare delivery system. The paper however recommended among other things, that health records department should be well structured and staffed in order toprovide effective health records services and that deployment of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) should beconsidered to solve the problems of storage space, misfiling, mislaying and missing case notes so as to restore theconfidence of the patients in the system.Keywords:, Public confidence, Healthcare delivery system, Health records services; Good health records management practice; Teamwork