Ogona Anita
Rivers State Hospitals Management Board has launched a pilot programme towards the dissemination/ roll-out of the balanced scorecard implementation in public secondary hospitals in Rivers State.
Flagging off the programme, the Chief Medical Director of Rivers State Hospitals Management Board, Dr. Bright Ogbonda, ably represented at the occasion by the Director, Medical and Dental Services of the Board, Dr. Ishmael Jaja reiterated that the scorecard launch is part of the concerted and determined efforts of the board to see to it that all secondary hospital facilities operate at maximum level in the state.
Dr. Jaja then enjoined all the medical doctors and representatives of the various secondary health facilities to ensure that they always applied the knowledge in the scorecard for better service delivery.
The representative of the CMD gave the assurance that the concerns expressed in the scorecard will be improved upon at the various secondary health facilities in such a way that by the next assessment meeting, they would have been fully dealt with.
The CMD also promised that the board would own up the project, even as they hoped to scale up the needed improvement and sustain it.
In a goodwill message at the event, a former chairman of the board, Supervisor co-investigator of the project, Prof. Daprim Ogaji described the scorecard project as a very important management tool that will integratively improve the health system.
Prof. Ogaji commended the Chief Medical Director, the doctors from the various secondary health facilities, and all stakeholders for owning up the project, assuring them that the innovation will benchmark performance within secondary health facilities.
Also, speaking at the event, a second co-investigator and supervisor of the project, Dr. Foluke Adeniji decried a misnomer in health practice in Rivers State, where patients are directly referred from a primary health facility to a tertiary hospital, expressing optimism that with the launch of the scorecard in the state, the processes will be normalised.
Earlier, in her welcome remarks, the principal investigator of the project, Dr. Juliet Aleme has emphasised that the launch is to disseminate and show the balance scorecard framework, which is envisaged to improve the performance of secondary hospitals in Rivers State.
Dr. Aleme, informed all that the objective of the event was to officially introduce the scorecard project and to build ownership and commitment among hospital managers.
It would be noted that the project, which has the theme, ” Balanced Scorecard for the Enhancement of Performance and Accountability in Public Secondary Hospitals in Rivers State- BEPPARSH-S ,” is supported by Robert Koch Institute ( RKI) under the CARE Project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Health.
Idanye Oruigoni,
Information/Public Relations Officer.
