Only 40% Of Nigerians Visit Public Hospitals, Physician Laments

A family Physician at the Nisa Premier Hospital, Dr Joshua Ofoli has lamented low patronage of public hospitals by Nigerians.

Ofoli, on Thursday, while presenting a paper titled, “Rationalising Public Hospital Governance and the Quality of Care” at the ICOHMA conference in Abuja said only 40 percent of Nigerians visit the 73 percent of health facilities at the federal, state or local government levels.

He, however, said the low patronage was due to the inability of the hospitals to deliver proper healthcare quality.

“Despite serving as a critical provider of health services to the population, public hospitals are faced with several challenges that affect their ability to deliver quality healthcare to the population.”

Though funded by the government, Ofoli revealed that these public hospitals are surrounded by several challenges as its management processes are dominated by hierarchy, poor communication and interaction, bureaucracy which affects the speed and quality of decision making.

“In practice there can be mismatches between the owners’ performance objectives and the incentives of hospital managers who have multiple and different types of accountabilities that complicate relations between owners and managers.

“Measures that lessen central authority and increase the management autonomy of individual hospitals, accompanied by marketization forces, have been a pronounced trend in hospital governance reforms worldwide,” he said.