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Access to healthcare is seen as a fundamental right for everyone. This right cannot be unreservedly accessible by all citizens without efficient and effective management of finances in our health facilities. This study had the overall objective of determining the connection between financial management practices and the quality-of-service delivery to patients after visiting health facilities in Meru County in Kenya. The purpose was to analyze how accounting practices, cash flows management, audit and financial reporting could affect the quality of service delivered to patients in the health facilities in Meru County. The study was to be of great importance to agencies of government, county health departments, scholars and citizens who were to benefit with improved service provision and in the long run improved health standards. Institutional theory, contingency theory, financial control theory and service quality theory were adopted in this study. A study was done where the level 5, 4 and 3 health facilities were selected and considered for analysis. Random and purposive sampling were adopted to select the respondents during this study. Level 5,4 and 3 facilities had finance officers and administrators hence we had 75 finance officers as respondents from the 63 facilities, finally 309 patients that had enjoyed services from each of the 3 cluster level facilities were interviewed. The study relied heavily on financial reports which are relatively limited due to implementation of financial management controls and this could negatively affect data analysis. The researcher was also limited by time. To counter the anticipated challenges, the researcher ensured that the respondents were assured of anonymity and confidentiality. Descriptive research design was adopted in this study. The study was conducted by distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews with participants. Inferential and descriptive statistics was used to analyze data. Descriptive statistics are indices that describe the sample such as measures of central tendency (mean, mode, median), measures of variability (standard deviation, Range, Variance), distribution in terms of frequencies and measures of relationships (correlation coefficient) Inferential statistics went deeper than just describing the data; they infer us to make predictions that we can generalize to the whole population. Correlation analysis was utilized to show whether there is a connection between financial management methods and the provision of healthcare services. The acquired data was examined to ensure that the research's conclusions addressed the issues at hand. Financial reporting accounted for 66.4% variance in performance, R2=.664, which was significant and not by chance, F (1,254) =505.424, p<.05. The findings also shows that financial reporting has a positive and significant effect on health care service provision (β=.816, p<.05). This is a strongly significant effect. The findings shows that all the model coefficients: Accounting procedures (β = 0.416, p <.05); Cash Flow Management (β = 0.180, p <.05); Financial Audit (β = .280, p <.05) and Financial Reporting (β = 0.247, p <.05) had positive significant effect on health care service provision. The unstandardized β coefficient of accounting procedures shows that unit change in the level of accounting procedures causes a 0.358 units increment in health care service provision level and the change is significant as shown by the p-value. A unit change in Cash Flow Management, Financial Audit and Financial Reporting causes 0.148, 0.374 and 0.263 units increase in health care service provision in Meru County, Kenya. The study recommends health facilities to be more innovative in collecting the patient’s fees and how they maintain their records, facilities should invest in secure cash handling equipment and develop procedures for handling cash to mitigate against financial risks, payments should be streamlined with the annual grants received from the county government treasury, compare previous anticipated expenditures with actual expenditures.
Keywords:
FINANCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
Cite Article:
"ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON SERVICE DELIVERY IN THE PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES IN MERU COUNTY, KENYA", International Journal of Science & Engineering Development Research (www.ijrti.org), ISSN:2455-2631, Vol.8, Issue 9, page no.216 - 250, September-2023, Available :http://www.ijrti.org/papers/IJRTI2309029.pdf
Downloads:
000205115
ISSN:
2456-3315 | IMPACT FACTOR: 8.14 Calculated By Google Scholar| ESTD YEAR: 2016
An International Scholarly Open Access Journal, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed Journal Impact Factor 8.14 Calculate by Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool, Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Multilanguage Journal Indexing in All Major Database & Metadata, Citation Generator