ASSESSMENT ON HEALTHCARE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND CLIENT SATISFACTION AMONG PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HOSPITALS OF HARARI REGION

Reliable and affordable supplies of commodities and effective management of inventory are critical for the success of the health sector organizations. The scarcities and mismanagement of these medical commodities negatively affect the quality of health services and hospital's overall organizational performance in turn. Objectives: To investigate inventory management practices and its effect on hospital performance among public and private hospitals of Harari regional state, Ethiopia. Methods: hospital cross sectional study was conducted in three public and two private hospitals in Harar Town. Data was collected using structured and pretested questionnaire from total of 398 customers/patients from the five hospitals with stratified allocation to measure client satisfaction aspects of hospital performance. Additionally data was also collected from 32 hospital managers and officers (Procurement officers, store keepers, hospital administrators etc.) from five hospitals to assess the hospital inventory management practice, two aspects of overall hospital performance (Competitive advantage and Market& Financial performance of hospitals. Informed consent was obtained from the respective respondents. The information will be kept confidential. Data was entered in to SPSS version 20 for analysis. The data was presented in tables, frequencies, percentages, mean, median and standard deviations. Multiple linear regression analysis model was used with B coefficients and standard errors. Results:In this study atotal of 398 clients (94%) and 32 inventory related officers and officials from 5 hospitals were involved. Less than half of the clients (42.2%) were satisfied with Hospitals care and medical supply. Higher satisfaction (60.4%) was observed among private hospitals than public hospitals (29.5%). The overall mean score of Hospitals competitive advantage was found to be 3.6 out of expected 5 score. Hospitals market and financial performance mean score is 3.57 out of 6. Over all hospital performance is found to positively related with EOQ, ROL, ABC/VEN and hospital ownership but negatively related with VMI. The MLR model shows 63.4% of variation in the overall hospital performance can be shown by variations in the independent variables. Conclusions and recommendations: Establishing a good inventory management practice (EOQ, ROL and ABC/VEN) of hospitals are key to improve patient satisfaction, market and financial performance, competitive position and hence overall hospital performance