The advantages for the people accessing the Government Hospitals are the availability of free medicine, free treatment, and free surgery. This is not the only advantage a Government Hospital has to offer the public. Hundred per cent of the staff in Government Hospitals are qualified, and are from recognized institutions. All specialities are available under one roof and the greatest asset of a Government Hospital is the referral service. With the help of a robust referral system, the patient is assured of the best possible care.

But there is a popular misconception that Government hospitals are not equivalent to the ones run by the private sector. Despite the best physical infrastructure, and ample funds and equipment, owing to unfriendly behavior of some staff, lack of cleanliness, and other such issues related to managerial oversight, this mindset continues to prevail. To address this issue, TNHSP undertook the task of strengthening the Management systems of Government Hospitals.

Health Management Information Systems

TNHSP sought to use ICT and improve the ability to collect, store and analyze accurate health data across the state of Tamilnadu. The HMIS programme was conceptualized to provide critical health data across the health chain for quick and timely intervention by health directorates. The programme seeks to address the following issues bogging down the system, in the absence of an HMIS:

1. All the hospital records were being maintained manually, making creation and retrieval of the records highly time consuming
    
2. The Government was spending more funds to procure manual registers which were difficult to maintain
    
3. Duplication of records. For example, a patient was registered each time he/she visited the hospital
    
4. Reliability of the collected health care data for analysis was questionable
    
5. No snap shot/dashboard view was available to monitor the  performance of the hospitals
    
6. Real time data transactions happening at the hospitals were unavailable at the Institutional level, District level or the state level
    
7. Proper maintenance of equipment Inventory, monitoring of equipment downtime, drug stocks auto indent, drug stock accountability and monitoring for the drug expiry dates were some of the challenges the health system faced
    
8. At the institutional level, it was very difficult to map the In-Patient Disease classification to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 that is recommended and followed worldwide