By Aduma Aloysius Tochukwu
It is the duty of government to provide essential services to its citizens. Such essential services include provision of healthcare. Civil servants are saddled with the responsibility of operating the healthcare facilities on a day to day basis as their statutory function. But for some years now, the management of some healthcare institutions in the South East of Nigeria including University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu State University Teaching Hospital (ESUTH) and Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH) have engaged the services of a consultancy firm known as HealthStation Hospital Management Information Service (HMIS) to help the civil servants to facilitate effective healthcare services delivery and access to vital hospital management information for the administration of the hospitals. The study therefore assessed the activities of the consultant in these institutions. Specifically, the study was designed to: (i) discover the reasons that prompted the management of UNTH, ESUTH and NAUTH to engage the services of HMIS, (ii) enquire how the engagement of HMIS affects services in these public health institutions; (iii) examine how the engagement of HMIS in UNTH, ESUTH and NAUTH affects staff improvement in these public health institutions; (iv) investigate the challenges encountered by HMIS in these public health institutions and proffer solutions to these challenges to ensure enduring services in these public health institutions. Four hypotheses were proposed and tested. A quantitative and qualitative research designs were used for the study.