| Abstract: | There are evidences and claims that the management of medical equipment in the public hospitals of Addis Ababa is suffering from a lot of problems related to procurement, utilization and disposal of medical equipment. Some of these problems are procurement of poor quality medical equipment, absence of inventory control system for medical equipment, low performance of medical equipment, absence of disposal practice for unusable medical equipment and low attention given to medical equipment management.
This study has been conducted in order to investigate the policies, practices and status of procurement, utilization, and disposal of medical equipment in the public hospitals of Addis Ababa. A structured questionnaire, interview of key informants and medical equipment inventory were used to collect data from the hospitals. From the collected data combined percentage rating of different functions of medical equipment management and operational performance of medical equipment were calculated. The study indicates combined percentage mean rating of 52%, 36%, 33%, and 12 % for the management of procurement, donation, maintenance and disposal respectively. The operational performance of medical equipment was 66%. The study also indicated non-existence of medical equipment management policies and procedures for selection, procurement, donation, utilization, maintenance, disposal and replacement of medical equipment, in most of the hospitals.
The study concludes that there is very poor management of medical equipment disposal and poor management of maintenance and donation. The management of the procurement is fair but it has significant problems. The performance of medical equipment doesn’t have linear relationship with the complexity and standardization of medical equipment.
Hence, all stakeholders of the medical equipment management of the hospital have to pave the way for the better management of the medical equipment through creating favorable environment including laws, policies and procedures and ensuring the implementation of the Ethiopian Hospital Reform Implementation Guideline. |
