Mombasa County has begun digitising its health facility operations with the help of the national government.
The digitisation will help improve services at the various county health facilities including the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital.
It will introduce checks and balances that will ensure patients get value for their time at the facilities and tame rogue practitioners who steal time and drugs from public facilities.
Speaking during the launch of the Social Health Authority mass registration exercise in Mombasa, Governor Abdulswamad Nassir said every health practitioner in public health facilities will be equipped with a gadget where every patient’s details and service rendered to them will be keyed in.
“The device will tell us real time who has been attended to, from what time to what time, the drugs they have been prescribed and whether they got them or not,” Nassir said.
If patient X is being attended to by a nurse at, say, 3.30pm, the device will show what has been done to them in terms of treatment of preparation and what time they were referred to a doctor.
“That means if a nurse attends to a patient at 3.30pm and the patient was referred to a doctor at 3.40pm, we will be interested to know when the doctor attended to the same patient.
“If the doctor attends to them at 5.01pm, the doctor will have to explain where he was between 3.40pm and 5.01pm,” Nassir said.
He said the digitisation will also help keep track of drugs bought by the county and monitor their usage.
He wants to deal with the stealing of drugs by medical practitioners who equip their private facilities with county drugs.
Last year, the county bought Sh153 million worth of drugs and this year, some Sh72 million worth of drugs have been requested.
“All these drugs must be used by patients who visit our county health facilities. If they find their way to private facilities, we will know and somebody will have to be used as an example,” he warned.
President William Ruto’s economic advisor Moses Kuria said an expert from the US has come to help both the national and county government digitise all health operations in the country starting with Mombasa county.
He said within the next 14 days, all the over 1,300 health practitioners in Mombasa will have digital platforms to treat patients.
He said with the digitisation of health operations, mothers who give birth to babies in public facilities will walk away with their children’s birth certificates and not have to wait for weeks for them as has been the case.
He noted that the government is also setting up 30 centres for collection of national ID cards in Mombasa.
This will help in SHA registration
by the Community Health Promoters, who will be trained for two days
on SHA operations and registration
process so they can help in the mass
registration.
