University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, UCTH

The Chief Medical Director, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital UCTH, Prof. Ikpeme Ikpeme has disclosed that the health institution was gradually moving from paper to deploying electronic healthcare operations management system.

According to him, this was part of the management’s plan to render effective and quality service to client and patients alike.

He made the disclosure shortly after taking Journalists on a tour of the hospital which has experienced an upgrade in almost all its department since he took over the saddle of leadership two years ago.

Ikpeme said: “We are deploying an electronic Healthcare operation management system. So ultimately we are moving from “Paper works” to full electronic management system.

“About 60% because a financial model has been set up completely right now and we are doing that from one department to the other. And what this means is faster intervention time, no need to move papers from place to place you don’t need to lose data.

“For instance, you sit down in the clinic do your prescription for the patient the patient goes to the pharmacy without carrying any paper and the prescription is there immediately for dispersion,” he said.

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Speaking further about the development the hospital has witnessed in the last two years he sighted radiology department experiencing complete rejig adding that before now it was impossible to have x-rays but that was now a thing of the past.

His words:”The typical example I will give is a department of radiology prior to this time it was not possible to have x-rays done for instance.

“But as we speak now we have the direct digital x-ray system we have 4D ultra science, 32D so patients who come here and need radiology interventions don’t need to go outside to have those things done same thing with the Laboratories.

“we’ve also automated our Laboratories as well and in fact our medical microbiology laboratory is now in a designated AMR laboratory and we are setting that up now and so we’re moving from where patients came here consulted and needed to go outside.

“Today investigations are now done in-house both in the radiology and in the Labs. We’ve also introduced some new services for instance in the department of gynaecology will be introduced laconscopic surgery and hysteroscopy so that is also done there despite these developments our chargers are still relatively pocket-friendly as compared to health Institutions in our cadre,” Ikpeme said.

The CMD further explained that most of the things they have done were basically from IGR of the hospital while other stuff like a new 10-bed laboratory were funded by the Federal government.

“Most of the things we’ve done have come from our IGR. Other things have been specifically funded like where we are now is a new 10-bed laboratory. This is a specific federal government funding under the Covid intervention while others have come from our IGR and then the CT scanner is a public-private partnership as well as a health information management system.

“We need a lot of things like every other Hospital, we need support as a hospital for instance we need accident emergency facility we need to complete our central stores and we need a lot of other clinic areas to support our function,” he said.

Vanguard News Nigeria