Evaluation of Hospital Autonomy and Its Effects on Human Resource Management: A Case Study of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital

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2011-07-20
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Management of human resources in health is a major challenge to health systems development in Ghana. This includes planning for, production, deployment and utilization of health personnel. Although a number of measures have been instituted to meet this challenge, considerable gaps still remain. Recently, hospital autonomy was introduced with a major emphasis to help improve efficiency in the delivery of health services by the public sector. Hospital Autonomy is essentially a form of decentralization that seeks to address the division of economic and administrative power and responsibility between the central and sub-national units of the government of Ghana. It therefore refers to the extent of decentralised decision making in six key management areas: strategic management, procurement, financial management, human resources management, administration, and clinical governance. Using Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital as a case study, this research sought to explore the potential effects of Hospital Autonomy on Human Resource Management. Questionnaires and interview were used to obtain primary data for the study. Respondents were those employees who have worked in KATH for more than eight years, whilst purposive sampling was used to select the head of the human resource unit. The data was entered into SPSS software 16.0 version to assist organize and generate descriptive statistics. It examined whether Hospital Autonomy in Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital had some benefits and challenges with particular reference to human resources management. The study revealed among other things that although hospital autonomy improved some aspect of human resource management in KATH, for example the timely promotion of staff, other areas of human resource management that had to do with the remuneration of staff had not seen much improvement. The research showed that salaries were still processed by the central administration. The study recommends that the government or Ministry of Health (Ghana) should give more autonomy to hospitals to enable management take decisions especially in areas where the government still has much control.
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A Thesis submitted to the Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Commonwealth Executive Masters in Business Administration, July, 2011
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