Inventory Management in the Ghana Health Service and its Role in Healthcare Delivery: (A Case Study of Health Facilities in Ho Municipality)
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Date
2012
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Abstract
Healthcare systems are organizations established to meet the health needs of target population. Inventory represents the largest single investment in assets for most organizations. While inventory is concerned with monetary issues, health facilities are in the business of saving lives. Although inventory has an important role to play, the emphasis should be on using it in a way that makes a difference to the quality of patient care. Despite efforts being made by the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service and its partners to provide the country with health commodities (medicines and medical logistics) to meet the requirements of clients (people who need the healthcare), these commodities are often wrongly managed or inadequate. These therefore leaves the clients with no alternatives than to fall on the traditional medicines or travel over long distances in search of health care or seek spiritual assistance from churches, shrines, witchdoctors and so on. The main objective of this research is to assess the role that inventory management plays in primary healthcare delivery system. To achieve the objective, health facilities in the Ho municipality were chosen for the study. The researcher adopted the stratified sampling method to choose Seventy-Eight respondents. The respondents were divided into three (3) strata in order to ensure that each was appropriately represented in the survey sample. Stratum 1, comprised the inventory managers; Stratum 2, comprised the healthcare providers; and Stratum 3, comprised the healthcare receivers.It was established that majority of inventory managers and healthcare providers leave their jobs or facilities and travel long distances for the health commodities from either the Central Medical Stores (CMS) or the Regional Medical Stores. In most cases, these inventory managers happened to be the only staff at the department or unit, thus depriving the facility of their valuable service. The researcher recommends that health commodities must be delivered directly to the health facilities from the Central Medical Stores (CMS) and the Regional Medical Store (RMS).
Description
A Thesis submitted to the Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Commonwealth Executive Masters of Business Administration