"A Mini-Revolution in the Albanian Primary Health Care System"
The work of policy makers, managers, physicians and other health service staff cannot be successfully understood and achieved without the information produced and circulated within all levels of the health system. The accurate and rapid information that follows collection, processing and analyzing of reliable data on time is essential for primary health care planning and decision making, as well as for clinical diagnosis and treatment. In contemporary medicine the use of computers, special software and networks is as important as developing new drugs and equipment. The interest to modernize and develop an improved primary health care information system was the incentive for positive cooperation among the structures of the Ministry of Health and USAID.
After a productive collaboration between the Primary Health Care Directorate of the Ministry of Health, the Public Health and Primary Health Care Directorates of Berat district (a small city two hours from the capital, Tirana) and the Project Partners for the USAID-funded Primary Health Reform Plus (PHRplus), a national workshop was held in Berat to discuss the new Health Information System for Primary Health Care. It was made evident that the new, Albanian version of the information system is simple, rapid and complete with accurate data. Certainly, it has proven to be a “mini-revolution.”
In concrete terms, when a general practioner and other medical staff access the primary health care system, within one to two minutes a form with basic data is filled out. Thereafter, this form is computerized, processed and analyzed. The processed information provides instant familiarity with the patients’ current condition and health history. This information ultimately affects the quality of the continuum of care for the patient, and improves management and planning of the health care system.
Preliminary results in the first pilot phase in Berat district are encouraging and interesting. This system indicates a great step toward the creation of a completely computerized system with electronic patient charts. It will not take long till the Albanian physicians, similar to their colleagues in the West, will have personal computers on their desks. In addition, the Albanian patient will have their electronic medical chart, similar to a credit card, instead of mountains of paper. Finally the pile of registers and forms will be a distant memory. The successful implementation of this innovative information system around the country by 2005 will allow for all data to “flow out” of every primary health care unit, not only in the cities but also in the most distant villages. Then we can talk with full conviction that our health system has made another great step toward becoming more like the European health care system.
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