Dr Sola Pitan, Medical Director, Orile Agege General Hospital (OAGH), Lagos, has urged healthcare providers to leverage technology and innovative ways to address challenges affecting healthcare delivery.
Pitan spoke at a two-day retreat organized by the hospital for management team, units’ heads and team leads of the hospital in Lagos.
The theme for the Strategic Management Retreat was “Building Resilience in a Changing Healthcare Space: Rethinking Resources Allocation”.
According to him, hospitals can be more resilient by adopting innovative resource allocation strategies, in order to remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment.
He said: “We have many factors affecting healthcare which include dwindling revenue, less funding for healthcare, increase in the prices of health consumables among others.
“This is why we put this retreat that started three years ago to strategies on how best to approach the changing healthcare service delivery in our environment.
“For healthcare providers we have to find a way to keep cost down through innovative ways, use of technology, inventory management”.
On the retreat, the Medical Director said the gathering provided an avenue for the hospital management to explore avenues for collaboration between healthcare providers and community organisations.
Pitan said that the hospital had expanded its services and also introduced several measures to reduce patients waiting time.
“We have been able to introduce some services which include a new Intensive Care Units for babies, High Dependency Unit for the very sick, Orthopaedic Unit and a Central Sterile Supply Department.
“We have a very robust community outreach programme for people within the environment and all these have been made possible with the support of the Lagos State Government,” he said.