Assessment of the effectiveness of maintenance management practices in national referral hospitals in Uganda; a case study of Mulago hospital.

Abstract

A hospital is a care center and as well a hub for medical and scientific knowledge. It is a building-based organization as the building expenditure is more than 50% of the asset base (Olanrewaju & Abdul-Aziz, 2014). Buildings are considered one of the most valuable assets that a nation has. The absence of effective maintenance of National Referral hospital buildings affects the financial performance of the entire organization. The size and nature of services that these hospitals offer contribute to waste generation, and environmental degradation and can become a source of diseases being spread in the event that these buildings are not operating at optimum level (Abdullateef , Woi, & Seong, 2018). Many hospital buildings are in a poor state. The deterioration of these structures is caused mainly by the failure to do preventive maintenance in time and failure to conform to the required building maintenance standards. This results in dilapidated structures that pose a health threat to the patients and health officials using them. The structures are soon abandoned and the costs of the repairs and renovation are quite high. This research was to assess the effectiveness of the maintenance management practices in National Referral hospitals with a case study of Mulago National Referral Hospital. In this study, the researcher carried out an interview that was both structured and semi-structured in nature. The form of interview used was the group interview. This included a face to face encounter with the targeted respondents. The researcher used participant observation as they openly observed the area of study and an observation checklist was used to prevent any inconsistences in the data. The maintenance done for the hospital buildings was still lacking in many aspects. The hospital had adopted a predominantly corrective maintenance strategy which is quite costly and yet the finances of the hospital could not sustain such a strategy. Therefore, there was need for the hospital to alter its strategy of maintenance to a preventative one.