الفهرس 
AcknowledgementOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 310 |  |  |
| | | from | 310 | | |
Abstract
Owing to financial constraints and cutback of services, there Is a growing awareness that rigorous monitoring should be enforced in the planning of health care services, especially the rospital care delivery. Pressure to monitor the health services and to correct observed deficiencies has also been increased by greater public aW:lreness, demand fur accountab ili ty from fundi ng agenci es justification fo r every expense, from the administra t io n. As no research studies exist in the areas of health monitoring in Kuwait, this project was undertaken. The study was undertaken with the primary aim of mnitoring the perfot’Tlllnce of the government general hospitals in Kuwait and their speciality departments during the period 1983-1985, and ’1986 wherever possible. The hospitals selected were the Farwania, Adan and Jahra general hospitals. These hospitals represented their respective health regions as specified in the Kuwait Health Plan. The population of discharged patients studied during the study period consts of 225,351 patients. The performance of these three hospitals as well as the various departments in each wa s monitored. The departments included were the Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Paediatrics, Obstetric s, G ynaeco logy, Ophthalmolo gy, ENT and Ortoopaedic Surgery. The aim wa s to devi se certain mo nitors and test them with the objective of studying the most appropriate ones. The indica to rs used were too se to measur e the utiliza tion rates, efficiency of utilization, quality of service and cost. A review of the available li terature soowed that there wa s no ~earth of information on health care ronitoring on a global scale. ioreover, much of the information is quite recent, making the collection and analysis of data much rore worthwhile. However, it found that there is little information on health care monitoring InKumit in general. In specific, there is hardly any study done to mo nit 0 r the per form a n c e of Go v e r nm e n t g e n era 1 ho s pit al. ~nsequently, no comparative information exists regarding the various departments in each hospital. This gap in the knowledge renders any comprehensive study related to health care ronitoring in !eneral and comparing the performance of hospitals in particular ~ulte dif fi c ul t . It is therefore, recommended that measures be taken to generate more data on this subject. This could be done llithout great difficulty by offering adequate incent ives to researchers in this field to carry out selected studies. One agency which could s]X>naH these studies is the Health Research Department of the Ministry of Public Health, Kuwait. The actual conduction of the study met no great obstacles and, in fact, was aided greatly by enthusiastic res]X>nse from the physicians participati ng in the Delphi res po nse group s. Th ere wa s also helpful cooperation by the administrative and other clinical and paramedical staff at the hospitals where the study was conduc t ed . Several indicators, such as administrative set-up, clinical DIInpower, intricate spatial arrangement of various departments and sub-departments, budget outlay and expenditure, etc., came to light ~uring the initial stage of the study which provided useful variables for later analysis. Af ter providi ng a backd rop fo r the proj ect in general and specifying the limitations, the study focussed specifically on the ronitoring process.by first defining the service population and subsequently examining the three measuring indicators, viz. ~uant1ty, quali ty a nd cos t. The health care utilization rate was different in the Gifferent health regions. The demographic a nd pop ula t io