A healthcare-based foundation, Pharm Access Foundation, in collaboration with Enterprise Development Centre (EDC), has equipped some selected healthcare professionals with the requisite knowledge to drive change in their respective healthcare institutions.
The foundation, through its Healthcare Management Programme (HMP), lectured health professionals from both public and private institutions on ‘Driving change in public institutions’.
This was in response to the urgency to strengthen Nigeria’s health facilities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and to improve the quality of care delivered especially in public health facilities which continue to provide the first line of medical care during the pandemic.
According to the organisers, the management of hospitals requires specific skill sets to achieve efficiency and positive health outcomes through a systematic approach. Many government-owned hospitals are not adequately managed because leadership have limited management and business training which is often lacking in the curriculum of Nigerian medical schools.
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The one-day training program was facilitated by Adedamola Dada, chief medical director, Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ebute Metta Lagos, and attended by over 40 healthcare professionals from both private and government healthcare organizations.
Dada spoke on the need to drive change in public health institutions and shared his experiences on practical steps which he instituted to transform the tertiary hospital including an initial assessment to determine areas of improvement, a digital transformation which boosted the revenues of the hospital and prevented leakages.
He also discussed in detail how FMC Ebute Metta brought about change in its infrastructure, procurement administration, staff capacity development, patient management, and other critical areas that led to the hospital to become more resilient, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country director of PharmAccess Foundation, Njide Ndili, during the training, noted that public hospitals, primary, secondary and tertiary level inclusive can be transformed if the management and medical personnel within public hospitals are adequately trained.
She added that there are more public facilities especially at the primary care level which have been abandoned or operating at a sub-optimal level.
“This has to change for Nigeria to achieve Universal Health Coverage,” she said. “The Government needs to invest in constant training and retraining of healthcare professionals to equip them with the skills needed to manage public hospitals.”
Healthcare Management Programme (HMP) is a certificate program designed to build the capacity of healthcare professionals in the key areas of quality, business, finance, operations, patient-centred care and inventory management.
The programme is designed to address the business capacity gap that currently exists among Healthcare professionals in Nigeria. The organisers say it was designed with a robust curriculum and delivered by seasoned world-class faculty through a blended approach consisting of online and offline classes.
They said the programme is designed to assist healthcare professionals in building their capacity to better manage their business.
“The majority of the HMP participants in the past have been from the private sector, hence the need to develop a public sector-focused training with Enterprise Development Centre (EDC),” Ndili said about the programme.
