Six decisions,
Not a list of anniversaries. Every entry below is something somebody argued about, paid for, and had to defend at the end of a quarter.
How the clinic
Every entry below is a decision somebody argued about rather than an anniversary. The pattern is the same each time: buy the thing that finishes the job in one visit.
Four physicians and an analyser
Three consulting rooms in a rented house on Nortei Ababio Loop. The haematology analyser was bought before the reception desk, on the argument that a clinic that cannot do a full blood count is a waiting room with a doctor in it.
The laboratory stops being a corner
Biochemistry, cultures and a second scientist. From that year on, most results came back the same morning rather than the following week — and the number of patients who never returned for their results fell by two thirds.
A door on the children's room
Somebody pointed out that a feverish two-year-old was sitting next to a man waiting for a cardiology review. The children's waiting room and the open under-fives clinic both date from that conversation.
Imaging, and a radiologist who reports
Digital x-ray and ultrasound, and a standing arrangement with a consultant radiologist rather than a machine-generated report. The rule from day one was that films are read the same working day or not offered at all.
The fees sheet goes on the wall
Printed, taped to the counter, and published on the website the same week. It cost the clinic money in the first quarter and has not cost it any since — people would rather pay a known price than a discovered one.
A doctor on the premises, always
The emergency line had been forwarding to whoever was on call at home. Since 2023 there is a physician in the building every hour of every day, which is the most expensive line on the payroll and the one nobody argues about.
Eighteen years,
The rented house is now the whole plot. Everything the clinic bought, it bought because sending somebody across town for it was costing them more than the machine.
Consulting rooms
People on the payroll
Lab tests last year
Hours a doctor is here
