ABSTRACT

Every cooperate organization, institution or government agency requires data and good quality information to function effectively. It is not an over statement to say that many organizations, institutions or government agencies have become critically dependent on the use of database system for their successes especially in the hospital. Data collected from various sources for example telephone, fax, verbal messages, mails e.t.c. are used in decision making, planning and control of operations in management of clients, personnel and resources. The data collected showed that poor efficiency of the present patient management system in hospitals today results from the inordinate length of time it takes to search for and locate patient folders and the ineffective filling system adopted. This project therefore aims at developing an improved patient information management system for Teaching Hospital Nnewi using an object-oriented design. The front end of this project is designed using PHP programming language while MySQL was used for data storage.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

A hospital is an institution for health care that provides patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Usually, hospitals are funded by the public sector, by health organizations (for profit or nonprofit), health insurance companies or charities, including funds by direct charitable donations. Historically, however, hospitals were often founded and funded by religious orders or charitable individuals and leaders. Modern-day hospitals are largely staffed by professional physicians, surgeons, and nurses. Hospitals are distinguished by their ownership, scope of services, and whether they are teaching hospitals with academic affiliations. Hospitals may be operated as proprietary (for-profit) businesses, owned either by corporations or individuals such as the physicians or they may be voluntary-owned by non-profit corporations, religious organizations, or operated by federal, state, or city governments. Voluntary and non-profit hospitals are usually governed by a board of trustees, selected from among community business and civic leaders, who serve without pay to oversee hospital operations.

Most community hospitals offer emergency services as well as a range of inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical services. Community hospitals, where most people receive care, are typically small, with fifty to five hundred beds. These hospitals normally provide quality care for routine medical and surgical problems. Some community hospitals are nonprofit corporations, supported by local funding. These include hospitals supported by religious, cooperative, or osteopathic organizations. In the 1990s, increasing numbers of not-for-profit community hospitals have converted their ownership status, becoming proprietary hospitals that are owned and operated on a for-profit basis by corporations. These hospitals have joined investor-owned corporations because they need additional financial resources to maintain their existence in an increasingly competitive industry. Investor-owned corporations acquire not for profit hospitals to build market share, expand their provider networks, and penetrate new health care markets.

Teaching hospitals are those community and tertiary hospitals affiliated with medical schools, nursing schools, or allied-health professions training programs. Teaching hospitals are the primary sites for training new physicians where interns and residents work under the supervision of experienced physicians. Non teaching hospitals also may maintain affiliations with medical schools and some also serve as sites for nursing and allied-health professions students as well as physicians-in-training. Most teaching hospitals, which provide clinical training for medical students and other health care professionals, are affiliated with a medical school and may have several hundred beds. Many of the physicians on staff at the hospital also hold teaching positions at the university affiliated with the hospital, in addition to teaching physicians-in-training at the bedsides of the patients. Patients in teaching hospitals understand that they may be examined by medical students and residents in addition to their primary "attending" physicians. One advantage of obtaining care at a university-affiliated teaching hospital is the opportunity to receive treatment from highly qualified physicians with access to the most advanced technology and equipment. A disadvantage is the inconvenience and invasion of privacy that may result from multiple examinations performed by residents and students. When compared with smaller community hospitals, some teaching hospitals have reputations for being very impersonal; however, patients with complex, unusual, or difficult diagnoses usually benefit from the presence of acknowledged medical experts and more comprehensive resources available at these facilities. A teaching hospital combines assistance to patients with teaching to medical students and nurses and often is linked to a medical school, nursing school or university.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

In the current system of operation in Teaching Hospital Nnewi, when a patient enters the hospital, the following sequence of operation is carried out. First, the patient is registered in the card/registration room, and then the patient goes to the nurses’ workbench for examination (vital signs), the nurses then carries the patient folder to the doctors’ workbench for diagnosis. After the diagnosis, the patient is then sent to the laboratory for test or the patient is sent to the pharmacy for collection of drugs; the pharmacy section checks the patients prescribed drugs and cost them before the folder is sent to the bill office for billing. After diagnosis the patient can also be referred to another clinic or to see a consultant in the same hospital. For example he/she may be referred for radiology services (CT scan, MRI, and ultrasound) or to special services like dental care. There may also be possibilities for surgical services. The inpatient may recover fully and be discharged or die and will be given a death report.

These processes are tedious and full of man-made errors. The purpose of the hospital management system is to automate the system for easy storage and retrieval of data, smooth flow of information and management of hospital. Some errors identified in the current system include:

i. Lack of immediate retrievals: - The information is very difficult to retrieve and to find particular information like- E.g. - To find out about the patient’s history, the user has to go through various registers. This results in in convenience and wastage of time

ii. Lack of immediate information storage: -The information generated by various transactions takes time and efforts to be stored at right place

iii. Lack of prompt updating: -Various changes to information like patient details or immunization details of child are difficult to make as paper work is involved.

iv. Error prone manual calculation: -Manual calculations are error prone and take a lot of time this may result in incorrect information. For example calculation of patient’s bill based on various treatments.

v. Preparation of accurate and prompt reports: - This becomes a difficult task as information is difficult to collect from various register.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

The main aim of this project is to design an automated patient record management system for Teaching Hospital Nnewi for controlling the flow of patient’s data in the hospital. To achieve the stated objective, the following specific objectives were laid out

i. Develop using web-based technologies a system capable of capturing and storing patients data for a teaching hospital

ii. System should be able to generate and manage bills of each patient

iii. Proper recording of patients’ diagnosis.

iv. Keep proper track of appointments made with the patient by the hospital

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