Healthcare finance expert Oluwadamilola Adeleke has called on Nigerian authorities to urgently reform the country’s healthcare funding structure, highlighting persistent inefficiencies that continue to stifle progress in the sector.

Speaking virtually at a recent healthcare financing seminar in Lagos, Adeleke, who serves as a Senior Financial Analyst at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, stressed the importance of optimizing financial processes to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes. With over five years of experience managing multimillion-dollar budgets in the American healthcare system, she believes Nigeria can draw useful lessons from more structured economies.

“In many public hospitals in Nigeria, funds are misallocated, not because there isn’t money, but because financial reporting and tracking are often poorly done,” she said. “When you don’t have clear insight into where your money is going, it’s difficult to measure impact or make informed decisions.”

Adeleke’s expertise lies in revenue cycle operations and financial forecasting. She has helped reduce operational costs by 10% at Rush through proactive resource optimization — strategies she believes can be adapted to Nigerian healthcare systems with the right tools and training.

She pointed out that many Nigerian healthcare facilities still operate manually without integrating modern Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, leading to poor patient record keeping, revenue leakage and poor charge capture. “If you can’t capture all charges, you can’t recover costs,” she warned.

In her previous role at a Home Health Agency in Chicago, Adeleke led the recovery of $1.2 million in unpaid insurance claims by streamlining billing and denial management. She believes similar recoveries are possible in Nigeria through better insurance claim handling and training of billing officers.

“There is no need to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “What is required is a robust system that makes tracking, analysis and accountability easier for hospitals. This, in turn, allows decision-makers to invest more in patient care.”

She also emphasized the need for hospitals to monitor performance using measurable indicators such as cost-per-patient, provider productivity and resource utilization. At Rush, she helped improve provider efficiency by 22% through targeted performance reviews.

Adeleke argued that financing healthcare should not be based on assumptions but on data-driven forecasts. “When hospitals operate without financial models or projections, they cannot plan effectively. Resources are then either underutilized or wasted.”

She recommended partnerships between government hospitals and private analysts to introduce forecasting dashboards/models using tools such as Excel and Power BI. “We have a talented pool of Nigerian professionals globally who are willing to help if given the right platform,” she added.

While acknowledging budget constraints, she believes that smarter spending, not necessarily more spending, is the way forward. “You don’t need more money to start. You need to manage what you already have better.”

She also urged the Nigerian government to prioritize healthcare data systems and workforce training in the next budget cycle. “Data is power, but only if you can interpret it and act on it,” she said.

As a passionate advocate for healthcare transformation, Adeleke is optimistic that with the right reforms, Nigerian healthcare can become more efficient and accessible. “We have the brains. We just need the systems to match,” she concluded.