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{
    "id": 594389,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/594389/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 202,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Ombaka",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1007,
        "legal_name": "Christine Oduor Ombaka",
        "slug": "christine-oduor-ombaka"
    },
    "content": "Thank you for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this very important Bill. First, there is no doubt that health information and records management are very important aspects in any health sector. There is a lot that goes on within that area in terms of information about patients, their transfers from one place to another and their records following them to the next level. What has been observed is that records are kept manually. Time has come when these records should be computerized, so that they are accurate and safe. This is so that they can be retrieved any time they are needed, whatever time they are needed. Right now they are kept in dirty and stuffy places. As somebody who has been a patient before, one observes that a patient is always given his or her own records to take home, including X-Rays. I find this very undesirable and quite not in order because these are records which should be kept in hospitals. I am just wondering what exactly health records hospitals keep when the actual records are taken away by the patients. Just last week, a woman came to my house looking for treatment. She had a whole load of X-Rays about herself and the disease she was suffering from. There is no confidentiality at all when a patient is given records to keep. These are some of the records that should not be kept by patients. They should be kept in the hospital. When a patient is referred from one hospital to another, the records should follow them. That should be done very carefully. Again, that is not done well. That is why I believe that this is a very good Bill. However, we need to adjust certain areas, so that patients do not carry their records home, because they will be open to reading by anybody, thereby lose their confidentiality. Another point that I want to raise on this is that the area of health records and information is a department in a hospital. To have a board for it is too much for this kind of department. There are many other boards within the medical world that are in existence. For example, there is the Medical and Dentists Practitioners Board. I wonder whether the management of information professionals will also be part of this Board. Can we find out the many boards that we have within the health sector under which these managers of information can fall rather than create a brand new one that will require so many people to be employed and money to be established and so on? We still can have a very powerful sector in the medical world where health records and information are properly kept. The boards that already exist can still be part and parcel of this work. As it has already been articulated here, we may be creating too many boards. We need to reorganise this Bill in a manner that we do not spend too much time on it and money establishing a board. In the medical world, there are boards that deal with ethics, discipline and so on, just as in any other profession. I believe that the ones that already exist are the ones that we need to be strengthened, so that managers of medical records and information can be part and parcel of them. That is my contribution. I support this Bill but will propose amendments. Thank you."
}