Automation has proved to be key in making sure service delivery within public sector is greatly enhanced. Talk about e-citizen, IFMIS and many others which have played a huge role in bringing better services to Kenyan Citizens.
Ministry of health has not been left behind in making efforts of developing a single authoritative source of health work force information that can provide an accurate account of health care personnel that have worked or are currently working at national or sub-national level including the private sector. This information will be maintained in an electronic health registry.
Many advantages are accrued by having a workforce data that is reliable across all information points. One of them is ; a country is able to plan for a better future by knowing how may health workers it has, what their qualifications are and skills are, where they are posted and how many new workers are likely to join them in the labour market. Without current information its not possible to ensure that the right provider is in the right place with the right skills. This therefore poses a great opportunity to meet the health care needs of our people on time.
Secondly it becomes easy to authenticate and validate the existence of a health worker and provide details about the person. Duplicate worker records will highly be eliminated and improve regulation of practice and track appropriate licenses of health professionals.
We can highly depend on the data for key policy decision making. For example policy on dual practice by health workers which poses an ongoing threat to the efficiency, quality control and equity of services especially in the public sector. We need to have practitioners being remunerated by the number of hours or days they have worked which should be contracted to ensure efficiency is maintained as well proper utilization of resource.
I believe universal health care depends on the necessary human resource to deliver health care services to the population of a country. Three major goals of universal health being equity access to health services, quality of health services that is good to improve the health of those receiving services and ensuring the cost of using care does not put people at risk of financial hardship. Developing an e-Registry will greatly deliver on Human Resources for Health.