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16 July 2021
One of the Accelerator’s overarching objectives at John F. Kennedy Medical Centre (JFKMC) Liberia, is to strengthen the hospital’s governance system and management processes by disseminating approved policies/guidelines across the hospital’s functional domains.
Over the past year, JFKMC leadership and the Accelerator have been working together to strengthen the hospital’s governance systems and management processes to improve the quality of care. Through this process, the team identified a lack of requisite policies and guidelines to standardize processes across fiscal, supply chain management, and service delivery.
To address these gaps, the Accelerator provided support to an implementation team at JFKMC to develop, revise, and finalize key policies and guidelines across different functional areas. A code of conduct and a human resource policy handbook were developed to ensure better employee management and enhance productivity. Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and guidelines for radiology (ultrasound and computed tomography scans), medical records, nursing, and operating theater; and protocols for clinical management of common conditions across several departments, patient complaints and grievance management, patient charter, and other resources were developed to standardize processes and ultimately improve quality-of-care and service delivery.
To strengthen financial compliance and audit control processes, the team developed policies for finance and accounting, fixed asset management, IT security, and revenue and grants management as well as SOP for cash management committee and an audit charter. Towards ensuring commodity security, procurement policy and guidelines for vendor, cold chain, inventory and warehousing, logistics management information system (LMIS), and dispensary management were developed to strengthen the hospital’s procurement, logistics, and commodity management processes.
In December 2020, 13 of these tools were presented to the hospital’s board and approved for dissemination. In addition, the Accelerator assisted the hospital to develop a modest budget for the printing of these policy documents, targeted at expediting its roll-out ahead of the hospital’s 50th anniversary. The program is also working with the hospital implementation team to obtain the board’s approval for the other finalized policies and guidelines ahead of the forthcoming anniversary.
The Accelerator is a global, USAID Cooperative Agreement to strengthen institutions and processes and build local expertise, to ensure that health systems can tackle future challenges and weather shocks with less reliance on external support. The HSS Accelerator is led by Results for Development (R4D) with support from Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF, headquartered in Nigeria), and ICF.
JFKMC Management Team, USAID/Liberia Representative and Accelerator (HSDF) team at an engagement meeting
