Health Records Management Practices and Patients’ Satisfaction in Selected University Medical Centres in South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

The idea of patients’ satisfaction has gained momentum in the last two decades due to increasing awareness on the right of the patient to quality health care regardless of religion and socio-political affiliation. The current study ascertains the extent to which patients are satisfied with the health records management practices in the university medical centres. This research employed a descriptive survey design. The study was conducted among the 210 patients (staff and students) who were randomly selected from 235 who had visited the Medical Centres for at least 4 times and had interaction with the Health Information Management Practitioners. Data was collected with the aid of a self-developed questionnaire which was tested for validity and reliability using Cronbach’s alpha test which yielded 0.83%. Data collected were analyzed using frequency counts and percentage distribution. Findings indicate that more than two-thirds (75.2%) perceived that their medical records files are well arranged. The results show that most of the medical centres were still making use of the traditional manual medical records-keeping (86.7%) while electronic records keeping accounted for only 13.4%. Also, (62.9%) of the respondents were dissatisfied with the overall level of service received while 62.9% of the respondents identified misfiling as a possible barrier militating against quick retrieval of patients' records. Above all, 90.5% of the respondents thought it necessary for the medical centre to keep patients’ records electronically for easy storage and retrieval. The paper recommends that regular staff training should be conducted for effective service delivery and improve patient satisfaction.