| dc.description.abstract | Financial performance of Kenya's public hospitals is essential for the nation's economic 
development. The notion of hospital quality improvement is centered on measuring 
public hospital performance. A description of what hospitals actually accomplish can be 
made possible by measuring hospital financial performance. Level three and four 
hospitals in Kenya focus on the provision of health care activities and develop individual 
spending plans and budgetary needs based on recommendations from headquarters 
distributed throughout the counties. In addition to other issues, the MOH health care 
delivery system was plagued by diminishing resources, ineffective use of those that were 
still available, and unfair resource distribution by 2015. Public health institutions now 
have to manage their own internal resources more effectively as the government's power 
to save failing institutions of higher learning was severely undermined. The purpose of 
this study was to ascertain how working capital management techniques affected the level 
three and level four hospitals in Meru County in terms of their financial performance. 
The particular objectives were to determine the effect of cash management, inventory 
management, accounts receivable, and accounts payable on the financial performance of 
Meru County's Level three and Four Hospitals. The study was grounded on the 
theoretical premise of contingency, resource-based theory, liquidity preference theory 
and cash conversion cycle theory. The study's research design was descriptive survey, 
which allowed the researcher to explain the elements of interest with regard to their 
attributes. The study used a questionnaire for data collection purposes. The target 
population consisted of fifty-three senior managers from all the fifty-three public Level 
three and Four Hospitals in Meru County. These managers included Hospital 
administrator or finance manager where applicable. The investigation was conducted in 
Kenya's eastern Provence, in the county of Meru.  Data analysis was conducted using 
SPSS version 27. Utilizing both descriptive and inferential statistics, the examined data 
was displayed. Regressions, both linear and multilinear, were utilized to determine the 
association between the variables. The investigation's findings showed that the majority 
of respondents were female, Additionally, most of the participants were between 31-40 
years of age. According to the data, undergraduates made up the majority of respondents 
with the highest level of education. The investigation concluded that working capital 
management techniques, which include inventory control, cash management, and cash 
payables and receivables management, significantly impact financial performance. The 
accounts payable results ultimately show a statistically significant correlation 
coefficients, thereby supporting the rejection of the all the null hypotheses. The study 
thus recommended that the head of finance in these hospitals should continuously 
communicate payment terms to the clients in a timely manner as this would ensure the 
payment terms adherence. Further, the study recommends that credit officers of these 
hospitals should time to time review accounts receivables age so as to facilitate 
continuous follow up on unpaid dues. | en_US |