PATIENT RECORD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN TEACHING HOSPITAL

PATIENT RECORD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN TEACHING HOSPITAL

ABSTRACT

To perform efficiently, every cooperative group, institution, or government body requires data and high-quality information. Many companies, institutions, and government agencies have become vitally dependent on the use of database systems for their success, particularly in the hospital. Data acquired from various sources such as telephone, fax, verbal communications, mails, and so on are used in decision making, planning, and controlling operations in client, people, and resource management. The data gathered revealed that the current patient management system in hospitals today is inefficient due to the excessive time required to look for and locate patient folders, as well as the ineffective filling system used. As a result, the goal of this project is to create an enhanced patient information management system for Teaching Hospital Nnewi utilizing an object-oriented design. The PHP programming language was used to create the project’s front end, and MySQL was used to store data.

CHAPITRE ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Study’s Background

A hospital is a health-care facility that treats patients with specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals are typically sponsored by the government, health groups (for profit or nonprofit), health insurance companies, or charities, including cash raised through direct charitable donations. However, historically, hospitals were frequently built and supported by religious groups or generous individuals and leaders. Professional physicians, surgeons, and nurses staff most modern hospitals. The ownership, extent of services, and whether or not they are teaching hospitals with academic links distinguish hospitals. Hospitals can be run as for-profit enterprises owned by corporations or people such as physicians, or they can be run as non-profit organizations, religious groups, or by federal, state, or city governments. Voluntary and non-profit hospitals are typically controlled by a board of trustees comprised of community business and civic leaders who serve without compensation to oversee hospital operations.

Most community hospitals provide emergency services in addition to a variety of inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical treatments. Community hospitals, where the majority of people receive care, are typically tiny, with 50 to 500 beds. These institutions often offer high-quality care for routine medical and surgical issues. Some community hospitals are non-profit organizations that receive local funding. Hospitals financed by religious, cooperative, or osteopathic organizations are examples of this. In the 1990s, an increasing number of not-for-profit community hospitals changed ownership, becoming proprietary hospitals owned and operated for profit by businesses. These hospitals have joined investor-owned firms because they require greater financial resources to survive in an increasingly competitive industry. Investor-owned firms buy not-for-profit hospitals in order to increase market share, expand provider networks, and enter new health-care markets.

Community and tertiary hospitals that are linked with medical schools, nursing schools, or allied-health professions training programs are considered teaching hospitals. Interns and residents work under the supervision of experienced physicians in teaching hospitals, which are the principal facilities for training new physicians. Non-teaching hospitals may also be affiliated with medical schools, and some may also house nursing and allied-health professions students, as well as physicians-in-training. Most teaching hospitals are linked with a medical school and may have several hundred beds. They provide practical training for medical students and other health care workers. Many of the hospital’s physicians also have teaching roles at the hospital’s connected institution, in addition to teaching physicians-in-training at the patients’ bedsides. Patients in teaching hospitals are aware that, in addition to their regular “attending” physicians, they may be seen by medical students and residents. One advantage of seeking treatment at a university-affiliated teaching hospital is the ability to be treated by highly qualified physicians who have access to cutting-edge technology and equipment. The discomfort and violation of privacy that may occur from several examinations performed by residents and students is a negative. Some teaching hospitals have a reputation for being impersonal when compared to smaller community hospitals; however, patients with complex, unusual, or difficult diagnoses usually benefit from the presence of recognized medical experts and more comprehensive resources available at these facilities. A teaching hospital integrates patient care with education for medical students and nurses, and is frequently affiliated with a medical school, nursing school, or university.

1.2 Problem Description

When a patient arrives at Teaching Hospital Nnewi under the existing system of operation, the following series of operations is carried out. The patient is first registered in the card/registration room, after which the patient is taken to the nurses’ workbench for inspection (vital signs), and the nurses then transport the patient folder to the doctors’ workbench for diagnosis. Following the diagnosis, the patient is either sent to the laboratory for testing or to the pharmacy for prescription collection; the pharmacy division checks the patient’s prescribed drugs and costs them before the folder is delivered to the billing office. Following a diagnosis, the patient may be referred to another clinic or to a consultant within the same institution. He or she may be referred to imaging services (CT scan, MRI, and ultrasound), or to specialized services such as dental treatment. There could also be opportunities for surgical services. The inpatient may recover completely and be discharged, or he or she may die and be granted a death certificate.

These procedures are time-consuming and rife with human error. The goal of the hospital management system is to automate the system for easy data storage and retrieval, seamless information flow, and hospital management. Among the errors discovered in the existing system are:

i. Inadequate retrieval speed: – It is quite difficult to acquire and locate specific information such as- E.g. – The user must search through several registers to learn about the patient’s history. This leads in convenience and time waste.

ii. Inadequate immediate information storage: -The information generated by various transactions requires time and effort to be stored in the proper location.

iii. Lack of prompt updating: -Changes to information such as patient details or child immunization details are difficult to make because paper work is necessary.

iv. Manual calculation is prone to errors: -Manual calculations are error-prone and time-consuming, which may result in inaccurate data. For example, a patient’s cost could be calculated depending on numerous treatments.

v. Preparation of accurate and timely reports: – This becomes a challenging task due to the difficulty in gathering information from numerous registers.

1.3 The Study’s Objectives

The primary goal of this project is to create an automated patient record management system for Teaching facility Nnewi in order to govern the movement of patient data across the facility. The following precise objectives were established in order to attain the stated goal.

i. Create a system for acquiring and storing patient data for a teaching hospital utilizing web-based technologies.

ii. The system should be able to produce and manage individual patient billing.

iii. Accurate documentation of patients’ diagnoses.

iv. Maintain accurate records of hospital appointments with the patient.