NO PATIENT TURNED AWAY: The Oyo State PHC Readiness Guarantee

NO PATIENT TURNED AWAY: The Oyo State PHC Readiness Guarantee

What is the value of a Primary Health Centre if a patient arrives and cannot obtain essential medicines, an emergency patient has no reliable means of transport to a higher-level hospital, or the facility lacks adequate clinical personnel?

Following a discussion I had with a student nurse who had completed postings across PHCs, as well as secondary and tertiary institutions in Oyo State, three concerns emerged: inadequate medicine availability, lack of reliable emergency transport, and shortages of doctors.

I propose the Oyo State PHC Readiness Guarantee, a policy framework designed to ensure that public PHCs meet and report minimum standards for essential medicines, emergency transport arrangements, and clinical staffing.

The policy would establish medicine stock-out and replenishment reporting, create coordinated emergency transport arrangements across local government areas, and promote needs-based clinical staffing and shared medical coverage where permanent placement is not feasible.

A quarterly PHC readiness scorecard would make service gaps visible and help government identify where corrective action is most urgently required.

Rather than simply investing more resources, this proposal focuses on ensuring that existing and future investments translate into reliable services for patients. It could begin with a pilot across selected urban and rural PHCs, with measurable targets and an independent review before statewide expansion.

The legislative question is simple: Can we establish a system in which no PHC's critical service gaps remain invisible, unmeasured, or unaddressed?

Healthcare access should mean more than having a facility in your community. It should mean having a facility that is ready to provide the care it is expected to deliver.