Bureau to roll out project to enhance service delivery in hospitals

The Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), says it will roll out a project on July 3 that will make it easier for patients to see doctors in government hospitals.

The Director-General of BPSR, Dr. Joe Abah, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Monday.

According to him, the project will help track patients’ experiences in hospitals, with a view to enhance service delivery.

Abah said this would also allow hospitals personnel, especially doctors and nurses, to be held accountable for their responsibilities.

He added that this would also help change the perspection the public had on some of the government hospitals as well as making it easier to see doctors in these hospitals.

“On the 3rd of July, we are starting a piece of work that will make it easier to see a doctor in government hospitals.

“We have done a presentation to the National Centre for Disease Control, we hope to do the same with NAFDAC and Primary Healthcare Development Agency.

“We are working with the minister of health on that and it will be funded from the 2017 budget and he has given approval to all the health agencies to cooperate with us.’’

According to him, the bureau is collaborating with UK DFID and we have selected three hospitals in each state – one teaching hospital, one general hospital and one specialist hospital.

Abah added that the four pilot states were the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Lagos, Enugu and Kano, adding that the project would be expanded to cover other states.

“We are hoping that the data gathered from these places will give us rough estimation of what will happen in other areas.

“Generally, we will be looking specifically at the ease of accessing doctors and the waiting times that it takes a patient to see a doctor in our hospitals.

“We are going to be looking at a lot of things ranging from the queuing system, signs that tells you where to go, how quickly are you seen by a nurse immediately you arrive.

“Do you know when the doctor will be there, what the referral system is, how accident emergency, pharmacy, Gynae works?

“These and many and the whole experiences of seeing a doctor when you get to the hospital is what we are trying to track,’’ he said.

Abah noted that though the work required intellectual capacity of staff who would be engaged in the field work, he added that it would also be done digitally through a survey application.

He also said that the minister of health had instructed that “we develop a ranking system after the work had been completed”.

He said that this would enable the citizenry to be able to know the good and the bad hospitals in the country.

This, he also said, would serve as a wakeup call for hospitals that were not doing well to improve on their service delivery.