Essential management information to develop a management information system (MIS) for central hospitals located in Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract

This cross-sectional study is aiming at identifying the essential management information, the volume of and method to handle those information in central hospitals located in Hanoi. 44 managers from 8 central hospitals located in Hanoi, including hospital leaders, medical record division heads, out-patient division heads and pharmacy heads were studied by questionnaire from 18 August 1992 to 26 November 1992. The findings from the study show that essential information in those hospitals is drug information, planning, bed control and statistics. For Medical Record division, bed control, statistics, medical record and patient registration data are the most important information. For Pharmacy Division, drug control, planning information, statistics and manpower are at top priority. For the OPD, the most needed information are employee staffing schedule, equipment and patient registration. The average total volume of storage data is about 1 billion characters residently kept in a central hospital. The volume of data has no linear relationship to number of bed. Patient record is the greatest volume of data in terms of both daily data (113.86 ±18.4 thousand characters) and total volume of data to storage (350 million characters in 10.6 years of keeping). Drug prescription is the second greatest data (86.50 ± 16.38 thousand character and 270 millioncharacters in 5.4 years of keeping). The other remarkable data in terms of volume are patient admission and drug distribution record in pharmacy division. To date, the main media to keep data at those hospitals are logbook, report or document. The way to file data is simple by alphabetical, date and last copy order. Computer system is seldom utilized. Management information system in central hospitals in Hanoi is still weak and simple. The results from this study should be used for developing the information system that is essential for hospital managers to provide strategic management.