New Registration Office at CMH

My first trip to Chimala Mission and the hospital was an experience in every department not just in the nursing area.  Below is what the registration area looked like.  It was a small room with barely room for a small desk, 2 workers and the files.  And the files.....I could not believe it....

They were pieces of paper folded in half and then stuffed in bins.  I could not even come close to estimating the number of files in this room.  It was an absolute mess.  The files went back more than 20 years.  I have begun the process of archiving (sending them to file 13) files where patients have not returned to the hospital in 5 years or more.  In other words, when I went through the 2006 files I only had around 75 files which I kept....the rest went to the burn pile.

The picture below shows the files to be burned on the right and I have only gone through the first third of the bin on the left.  The dust, dirt and dead bugs in these papers are plentiful.  What a dirty job to go through.  To date I have only gone through the year 2006 and the first 3 months of 2007!

Just this past weekend, we began the process of enlarging the registration area to about double it's size.  We also increased the registration window to two windows instead of one to speed up the registration process.  On any one day we can see anywhere from 50 to 125 outpatients.

 

Below is where the old registration window used to be...This man worked for about 4 hours tearing down the wall.  Note he is using a sledge hammer to knock the wall down, but is wearing sandals on his feet.  Hope he is a good aim!

Here you can see the two new windows.  I am so excited to be getting this project done.  It will help the hospital provide better care to the patients.  The paper files were only the outpatient records.  If a patient was admitted to hospital, they were given a paper in-patient file, but the outpatient and inpatient records were not kept together....this meant that the treating doctor did not have the entire medical history.

Here are our NEW files!  They contain the entire patient history..both outpatient and inpatient records.  We started the new files in May.  Change is very hard for most people, but especially for Tanzanians.  However, I do believe that everyone is happy with these new files.  The patients like them too, even tho we had to increase the registration fee to cover the costs.

 

 

 

 

Along with re-organizing and re-structuring the department, we have also started a new accounting process.  As I have informed you before, this is the only hospital for about an hour in any direction.  Without this facility many more people would die.  In order to keep this hospital open, we must be able to cover our costs. This new system helps us to more accurately re-coup our expenses.

You may wonder why I believe helping the hospital become a better facility is the job for a missionary.   With every patient we treat, we have an opportunity to show the love of God and to reach out and teach His Word.  The people we treat here live in villages all around this area.  The next step is to begin mobile clinics in the farthest villages.  As we begin the clinics, some of the people will have already become familiar with the Chimala Mission Hospital and I may have even talked with and/or helped with their treatment.  The relationships we are building in the hospital will assist us as we reach out to each small village.  In the smaller villages, we will be working with the local preachers as we reach out to bring the Word of God to all who are interested.