Studies in health technology and informatics
-
Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Multicenter StudyThe Role of Hospital Information Systems in Universal Health Coverage Monitoring in Rwanda.
In this retrospective study, the authors monitored the patient health coverage in 6 Rwandan hospitals in the period between 2011 and 2014. Among the 6 hospitals, 2 are third level hospitals, 2 district hospitals and 2 private hospitals. Patient insurance and financial data were extracted and analyzed from OpenClinic GA, an open source hospital information system (HIS) used in those 6 hospitals. ⋯ The amounts paid by the patients for health services decreased in private hospitals to 25% of the total costs in 2014 (-7.4%) and vary between 14% and 19% in public hospitals. Although the number of insured patients has increased and the patient share decreased over the four years of study, the patients' out-of-pocket payments increased especially for in-patients. This study emphasizes the value of integrated hospital information systems for this kind of health economics research in developing countries.