Financial management and service delivery of government hospitals in Uganda

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the effect of financial management and service delivery of government hospitals. The service delivery of government hospitals is an important aspect in the community because it’s through them that the community receives quality health services. Many government health institutions are coming up and this has increased the need for proper control of the finances of those hospitals as a means to improve on the quality of services offered to the community. There are many government hospitals that have good financial management, a large number still seem to have inadequate financial management systems, this gives a gap on the efficiency especially of the financial resource allocation by hospitals. The studies examine the effect of financial management on service delivery in government hospitals taking a case Entebbe Hospital. The study used empirical data acquired through questionnaires, review of the existing documents and interview with the hospital management, accountants, finance committee and medical staff. The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively to assess the effect of financial management and service delivery of government hospitals. The findings of the study show that the main sources of revenues for the hospital are user fees, grants and some external donations. The main challenges to effective financial management were lack of adequate capital, poor inventory management, and lack of participatory budgeting. The analysis showed a strong correlation between financial management and service delivery of government hospitals. The study therefore concludes and recommends that to ensure efficient and effective financial management in the hospital, management needs to strengthen the internal control procedures, and policies diversify the sources of revenue, improve on the infrastructure, staff development.