Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre (One World Health) is a private for-profit facility located in Kiryandongo District, Uganda. The facility faced several challenges, including patient records storage, stock management, and managing expiries and stockouts. After implementing Stre@mline EMR, a patient records management system, Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre was able to improve patient care and streamline its operations.

Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre is a private for-profit facility located in Kiryandongo District, Uganda, established in 2019 under the One World Health Organisation Network, the facility partners with a number of insurance companies, including AAR, JUBILEE, PRUDENTIAL, and CASE MEDICAL. Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre offers several medical services, including outpatient care, ultrasound scanning, antenatal care, maternity care, and inpatient care. The facility prides itself on its experienced medical professionals who are dedicated to providing the best possible care to patients around the community.

Challenges

Before implementing Stre@mline EMR, Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre faced several challenges, including:

• Patient records storage and missing patient records in registers: This was attributed to the busy Outpatient Department (OPD). Tracking patient records/files and tracking them was a challenge since the storage facility was already full and some patients would leave without their information being entered in the Red Book registers.
• Stock management: Tracking stock movement around the facility was a challenge since the store's person would have to move all the departments and manually check the balances against their requisitions made.
• Managing expiries and stockouts of Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre: Drugs would go out of stock without knowing since it was very hard to track.
• Average patient waiting time around Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre was hard, especially around the scan room and Laboratory since you could not tell how long it had taken to perform a test or scan.

Actions Taken

Stre@mline EMR was installed at Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre on September 4, 2023. A total of 22 staff members were trained on how to use Stre@mline EMR in 2 weeks. These included the hospital administrator, medical doctors, clinicians, OPD nurses (pharmacists, store managers), IPD nurses (maternity, antenatal, general ward), and receptionists.

Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre was able to set up their price lists (drugs, sundries) which were uploaded and the stock reconciliations for both pharmacy, other departments (wards), and stores were performed. All diagnoses were set up with their right HMIS outpatient numbers and the respective HMIS categories to ease the generation of the different HMIS reports.

Results

As of October 6, 2023, Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre has registered 1369 patients on Stre@mline EMR with over 1476 episodes, carried out 23 procedures for OPD and 23 procedures for IPD, 698 prescriptions, 264 laboratory requests processed, and 781 diagnoses captured.

With the number of insurance companies at Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre, the cashier, with the help of the credit officer, has managed to set up the price lists for all different insurance companies and other related patient categories.

Miss Simpola Adongo, an enrolled nurse at Bweyale Kitara Medical Facility, can generate and print the Medical Form 5 and Discharge summary with just a click, which has improved her work ethic and patient care to the patients she attends.

Miss Mercy Mwesigwa, the medical records assistant and stores manager, says that management of stock has become much easier as she can monitor different stock cards in all the facility departments against their expiries and stockouts.

Mr. Samuel Adior, the facility administrator at Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre, says that with Stre@mline, he can monitor the performance of his staff with just a click and statistics of each show, which has given him more time to focus on other administrative tasks and patient care at the facility.

Conclusion

The implementation of Stre@mline EMR has helped Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre improve patient care and streamline its operations. The facility has been able to reduce patient waiting times, improve stock management, and generate reports more easily. The staff at Bweyale Kitara Medical Centre are also happy with the new system, saying that it has made their jobs easier and more efficient.