UTILIZATION OF ROUTINE HEALTH DATA IN DECISION-MAKING BY MANAGEMENT TEAMS IN SELECTED LEVEL 4 HOSPITALS IN NAKURU COUNTY, KENYA
UTILIZATION OF ROUTINE HEALTH DATA IN DECISION-MAKING BY MANAGEMENT TEAMS IN SELECTED LEVEL 4 HOSPITALS IN NAKURU COUNTY, KENYA
Kagwiri Mary - Student, Master of Public Health (Epidemiology and Disease Control), School of Public Health and Applied Human Sciences, Kenyatta University, Kenya
George Otieno - Lecturer, Department of Health Management and Informatics, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Ramadhan Mawenzi - Lecturer, AMREF International University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Health data are the relevant information routinely collected in health institutions by health workers. The health population needs can only be identified through data collection, collation and analysis that provides information that should be used by the hospital management teams (HMT), in prioritizing resource allocation for service delivery, health work force, essential medicines, and governance. In most hospitals, these crucial managerial responsibilities seem to be lacking the support of data use for evidenced decisions, leading to poor service delivery and unnecessary referral of patients, yet the same hospitals task their health workers with data collection and monthly submission of reports. In light of this, the aim of this cross-sectional study, was to assess utilization of routine health data for decision making by HMTs of the selected level 4 hospitals in Nakuru County; Molo, Subukia, Olenguruone and Naivasha sub county hospitals. This was achieved by determining the extent of use of the data collected for decision-making and examining data quality and identifying organizational factors, influencing use of routine health data in decision making. The target population of the study was 156 Hospital management team members, selected by use of census sampling method. The study used two data collection tools; the questionnaire and the interview schedule. An observation checklist was used to identify presence or absence of list of items representing quality data and evidence of data. A pilot study was conducted on a group of 17 hospital management team members (10% of the sample size) from Langa-Langa hospital. A Cronbach reliability coefficient of 0.72 was achieved for each of the construct and thus considered reliable. Analysis for Descriptive and inferential statistics were done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. The study found that Nakuru county has an average data utilization index of 62.9%, good use, and that accuracy of data collected as well as use of registers as a data collection tool were significantly associated with use of Health data at a p-value of 0.025 and 0.043 respectively. This study may act as a reference for informing the county government, on the status of the national governments’ initiative and the capacity of the hospital managers in sub county hospitals in data management for appropriate intervention. The findings may also act as a spring of literature for researchers to do auxiliary studies about routine data consumption for decision making at points of data collection.
