MANAGEMENT OF MEDICAL RECORDS FOR BETTER HEALTHCARE SERVICE DELIVERY

Abstract

Purpose: Medical records management is significant in a hospital setup for it ensures that patient medical records are created, maintained, confidential, secured and retrieved easily. Time wastage in locating and retrieving medical records is disadvantageous in a medical institution. This largely affect patient with critical health conditions since medical record retrieval is difficult thus rendering ineffective healthcare services.
 Methodology: This study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches with an aim of collecting more data to explain the aim of this research. The combination of the two research approaches gives the researcher the opportunity to collect numeric data. Feelings, opinions and interpretation of both the provider and the user of the healthcare services are based on the management of the medical records at Narok County Referral Hospital.
 Results: The study established that Narok County Referral Hospital uses a paper based manual medical records management system which is centralized. At the time of the study this system was serving the hospital without many problems. The few problems that could be identified included the loss or misplacement of patient files which necessitated the opening of temporary files.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: This study focused on the management of medical records only at Narok County Referral Hospital. Narok County Referral Hospital do produce other records apart from the medical records, the study recommends that another study that will focus on other records be conducted.