ASSESSING THE DIMENSIONS OF HOSPITAL RECORDS (MEDICAL RECORDS) IN DELIVERING QUALITY OF SERVICE TO PATIENTS
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ABOUT AUTHORS
Kenneth Amoah-Binfoh1, Collins Marfo Agyeman2, Pradhyuman Singh Lakhawat1
1 Dept. of Business Studies,
SHUATS University, Allahabad, U.P, India.
2 Dept. of Business,
All Nations University, Koforidua, Ghana.
ABSTRACT
Medical records through which hospital statistics are generated serve as eyes and ears to the hospital administrator. Medical records are of importance to the hospital for evaluation of its services for better patients care. Failure of duty towards the patient is failure to maintain proper medical records. Recently, medical records have become very importance in the area of education and training of physicians and others being the basis for clinical research. Medical records make research effective and require scientific observational records. Medical records as perceived to be the instructions documented in a patients file serve as a means of communication between the physicians and other health professionals caring for the patient. The essence of medical record is to ensure continuity of care. Ensuring continuity of care means medical records must be comprehensive, planned, economical, time-honored and classified in a right way. Managing these records are found concerned with several types of problems. The record keeping, making use of the records, destroying the old records of no use; documenting the important records found useful to the researchers and the medical scientists. The objectives of this paper were to find the challenging dimensions of medical records in delivering quality of service to patients and to identify the significant role of medical records in delivering quality service to patients. The researchers employed systematic sampling with a population of about 123 which included nurses, medical records and admission office (clinic-administrative departments) with a desired sample size of 60. It was found that creating as one of the dimensions of medical record was very difficult to do. It was recommended that indexing or cataloguing should be more innovative and simple within time limit, so that the required papers or records are easily made available to the concerned person.