QR codes to track performance of health workers in hospitals

KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Health has urged Ugandans to use the client satisfaction initiative in which they can use Quick Response (QR) codes to report errant health workers.

Following recent complaints of absentee health workers and run-down medical equipment at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital which the public blamed for the death of Araali Kigambo a local musician in the area, Dr Diana Atwine the Permanent Secretary in the ministry said on Monday that they had installed a system which will help them gauge patient satisfaction while using public hospitals.

She explained that all users need is their smartphone to provide feedback on the state of service provision by scanning QR codes that will be pinned at different spots within hospitals to access questionnaires on service provision.

While this system has been running in hospitals for over a year, Atwine says many health facilities have been reluctant to use it for fear of being pinned for non-performance.  Now, she says they have made fresh reviews to ensure that the system is up and running one of the performance indicators that hospital managers have to account for.

Ever since its launch in January 2024, figures by the Ministry of Health show only 37,408 clients have used the QR codes to report on the care they have received and about 34,080 have expressed dissatisfaction with the service.

Benson Tumwesigye, an official in the Ministry of Health says, they are noticing satisfaction levels to be going down as one goes high in the facility levels with regional referral facilities registering the highest number of complaints. He says 1240 health facilities across the country have had their reviews recorded.

Jamil Mpiima the Digitalization focal person in the ministry says the satisfaction surveys are just part of the bigger digitalization initiative where they are generally on the move to completely do away with paper charts replacing them with electronic medical records.

With electronic medical records, he says they will be able to salvage the time health workers take digging up medical records of continuing patients to offer them care in case of change in shifts or when patients are referred for further medical care.

Apart from patient care, this system which has already been set up in sixty-six hospitals can monitor health worker productivity and curb drug theft as prescriptions are done electronically.

However, Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital is one of those facilities that have already installed this innovation but Atwine says when they visited recently, they found the wire had been broken.

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