ASSESSMENT OF PATIENTS’ RECORD MANAGEMENT AND EFFICIENT HEALTHCARE SERVICE DELIVERY IN TERTIARY HEALTH INSTITUTIONS IN ABUJA, NIGERIA

This thesis examines the impact of patients’ record management on the efficiency of healthcare service delivery. The thesis will review both conceptual and empirical literature in the field and collect primary data from patients and staff of the three tertiary health institutions used for this thesis – University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), National Hospital (NH), and Federal Medical Centre (FMC). The thesis will collect primary data using a questionnaire instrument structured in 4-point Likert Scale format and secondary data used for this master thesis were drawn from the literature that are contained in journals, textbooks, government publications, anecdotal, etc, and analyzed using frequency tables. Data gathered from the institutions were gotten disproportionately from 181 patients in the hospitals, for the purpose of parity, only 102 samples were used for the analysis. This was to enable all the institutions have equal representation of 34 respondents each. Also, a total number of 9 respondents were staff members of the hospitals, bringing the total number of respondents to 111. Results indicate that the digitalization of patient data management has not been entirely successful, that handling of patient information issues exist, and, in the end, that outpatients and referral patients receive different treatments than those who are admitted directly to these hospitals. Therefore, the master’s thesis proposed that a new platform be created under the Nigeria Data Protection Act to fully manage patient data efficiently and that hospital staff members be taught by foreign specialists to handle the most recent technology in patient data management.