About Rugarama Hospital

Rugarama Hospital is a mission hospital located in Kabale district in South Western Uganda. The Hospital operates as a charity, Not- for-Profit Health institution as of the ministry of Christ’s Church. In its operations, the Hospital is committed to and implements the policies of the Ministry of Health of Uganda, policies of the Government of Uganda affecting Non-Governmental  Organizations and other international health policies which are not contradictory to the Christian Code of Ethics.

The Hospital works within the frame-work of the Diocesan Health Policy in close collaboration with the Health Coordination Office of the COU/Diocese of Kigezi and the Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau (UPMB). The hospital was started in 1983 and is located on Rugarama Road, Northern Division, Kabale Municipality

Vision: A Centre of Excellence, Continuously Able to Offer Comprehensive Health Services so that they may have a better life to the Glory of God.

Mission: To work as team to offer quality services, meet the community’s physical Mental and Spiritual Health Needs Whilst Showing the Love of Christ

Challenges

• Inventory management; In the midst of all the chaos, one thing was clear: the hospital's old system of managing stock was no longer working. The paper-based system was slow, prone to errors, and made it difficult for staff to keep track of what supplies were available.
• Managing patient records: The hospital is always a busy place, with doctors and nurses rushing from one patient to the next without taking proper record of the patient.
• Multiple Price Lists management; The hospital had multiple price lists and was unable to apply them to the specific categories of patients.

Actions taken

• The Stre@mline team installed Stre@mline EMR at Rugarama Hospital premises on the 9th September, 2020.
• A total of 48 staff including: the administrators, finance team, clinical team, records teams were trained in a period of four weeks.
• Rugarama Hospital team was able to set up its price lists, run stock count and stock reconciliations in both the store and pharmacy, etc on Stre@mline.
•  Hospital went live with Stre@mline EMR on the 28th September, 2020 and all OPD staff switched to the Stre@mline EMR. 

Results

As of 19th December, 2022, Rugarama hospital had registered a total number of 13,300 patients on Stre@mline EMR.

According to Sande Ivan the hospital pharmacist; "The hospital was always running low on supplies, with nurses and doctors constantly running around trying to find what they needed. But when the hospital implemented Stre@mline electronic medical record (EMR) system, everything changed."

The Stre@mline EMR has a built-in inventory management module that allows the hospital to track the stock of all their supplies in real-time. With this system, the hospital could see exactly what they had on hand and what they needed to order.

The hospital administration was also pleased with the EMR's inventory management system. It helped them save money by only ordering what they needed and avoiding unnecessary stockpiling.

According to Ruth Katusiime, the hospital can easily manage multiple price lists as compared to the previous system which was very hard. As a result, every patient is billed properly, exemptions applied where necessary and there are no losses.