A Proposed Automated Medical Records Tracking System for the Ridge Hospital

Abstract

The astronomical increase in attendance rate at health institutions confront medical records managers with large volumes of records to manage. Records storage facilities and information retrieval systems are therefore faced with several challenges in medical records management. This situation is very crucial if patients’ medical records retrieval systems are wholly manual. At the Ridge hospital, the manual medical records tracking system contributes immensely to missing patients medical records, delays and long queues patients endure before receiving medical treatment. This paper therefore employs the systems analysis and design approach, (also known as systems development lifecycle) to design and develop an automated medical records tracking system. This proposed system is a case study at the Ridge Hospital which is limited to tracking and management of only inpatients records. Based on the adopted methodology, preliminary investigations and analysis of the manual system were conducted to find the scope of the problem. Following the results of the systems analysis, Microsoft Access database program was used to develop a logical design to automate the manual tracking system. The design was finally modified and developed by using Microsoft Visual Basic 6 codes to operate as an automated medical records tracking system. The developed system does not only track records faster and more efficiently than the manual system but can also perform other records management functions such as generation of reports on admissions and discharge cases.