Establishing a tracking system in human resources department to improve the completeness of personnel files at a district hospital in Rwanda

Abstract

Introduction: For decades, many low and mid income countries (LMIC) have invested significant effort to improve access to and quality of health care, with less attention paid to the non-clinical, administrative hospital management. Accordingly, a practical personnel filing system was designed and implemented to improve file management efficiency.
Methods: Setting: The quality improvement project took place in a rural hospital in Rwanda. Design: A pre- and post-intervention study design to assess the effect of the intervention between January 2015 and February 2016. File auditing and time study were conducted. Intervention: A custom-made computer database to manage documents in a personnel file, standardized follow up process and policy were created and implemented. Measures: The pre- and post-intervention completeness of all personnel file and the average time to identify the missing items in a personnel file were measured to evaluate the effect of the project.
Results: The completion rate of personnel files increased from 83% pre-intervention to 96% post-intervention. The average time to identify missing items significantly reduced from 6 minutes 30 seconds pre-intervention to 49.6 seconds (p < .001).
Conclusions: This project demonstrates that quality improvement principles can help address administrative issues in a resource-challenged setting. By utilizing available resources to implement an intervention that focused on creating an easy and efficient process, the personnel file completion rate has increased considerably and the time needed to identify missing items significantly decreased. The hospital should apply the same strategic problem solving methodology to conduct other quality improvement projects.