The Influence of IMPACT Approach in Financial Resource Mobilization to Improve Availability of Essential Health Commodities in Sikonge DC

Abstract

The Tanzanian government, through the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PORALG) and various stakeholders, has developed several robust electronic health systems such as e-LMIS, GoTHOMIS, FFARS and DHIS2 to streamline health supply chain management processes and improve data visibility. However, the use of this data for informed decision making at all levels of the supply chain was found to be very low, which led to the introduction of IMPACT (Information Mobilized for Performance Analysis and Continuous Transformation) to increase the use of data to improve the supply chain in the country, including Sikonge District Council. Following the implementation of the approach, the IMPACT team in Sikonge discovered low performance in the availability of health commodities among other monitored indicators major reason being inadequate financial resources to procure health commodities. This prompted the team to look for other innovative ways of fundraising to rescue the situation in the council. The objective of this study was therefore to assess the influence of the IMPACT approach methods employed in mobilizing financial resources to improve the availability of health commodities in Sikonge DC. Some of the methods employed by Sikonge team for such a purpose were; conducting a preliminary data-driven analysis and assessment to identify issues related to i-CHF and NHIF services, developing strategies to increase i-CHF enrolment, retention, and disbursements, working on the most common anomalies in the NHIF forms to reduce the number of rejected claims and finally clearing the MSD debt of health facilities to relieve them of the financial burden. These strategies resulted in an increase in i-CHF funds reimbursement from Tsh1.4 million in September 2020 to Tsh8 million in December 2021. NHIF funds reimbursement increased from Tsh696,170 in September 2020 to Tsh12 million in December 2021. The overall percentage of health facilities submitting NHIF claims increased from 17% to 77% over the same period. Thus, the concept of IMPACT and the employed data driven strategies, played a major role in the results achieved in Sikonge and in order to meet the alarming demand for health commodities at service delivery points, council teams should show strong commitment in using real-time data for problem identification and resolution through IMPACT team approach as a tool for continuous improvement.