ABT Associates Inc./PHSP

 

Abt Associates is implementing the Private Health Sector Program (PHSP), a five year project funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) by USAID. The goal of PHSP is to enable Ethiopia’s Federal Ministry of Health and the Regional Health Bureaus to effectively partner with private health providers to deliver public health services, while improving the quality and affordability of these services. PHSP interventions are designed to enhance availability and quality of these services through the private health sector, and activities will result in enhanced government oversight of private health service delivery, strengthened public-private referral mechanisms, increases in financing for the private health sector, and improved client education.

Challenges

  • PHSP’s main challenge is to reduce the number of lost to follow-up (LTFU) patients among HIV-positive pregnant women by strengthening linkage and communication among Healthcare Providers and Health Extension Professionals (HEP) and improving the referral system among providers at health facilities.

Our Solution

  • Apposit implemented CIPO (Communications for Improving PMTCT Outcomes) with the objective to develop a patient tracking communications systems that will ensure HIV positive pregnant women are followed for pre and post natal care and provided with the necessary HIV care and treatment services.
  • The Patient Tracking System Management and Reporting Portal (PTS-MRP) is a browser based, management and reporting system that can be used by Abt and Health Facilities to register patients, track Lost to Follow-up and referred patients.
  • This system supports an SMS communication platform at the private health facilities that will be used to establish efficient communication with HEPs (including HEP Supervisors) and staff at Referral Sites.
  • The PTS will also be used to produce management reports for operational and oversight purposes, and will provide a dashboard for quick access to pertinent monitoring information.
  • Communication messages between stakeholders of the system is standardized so automated system responses have been programmed into the system.
  • Patient status has been standardized into statecodes for efficient and secure communication.

The Results

  • Close to 440 patients have been registered across various Health Facilities in Addis Ababa in two months. 360 Health Extension Professionals and 187 Health Extensions Professionals’ Supervisors are registered in the system.
  • The system is being used across 18 health facilities with about 36 HF staff.
  • The standardized statecodes have helped keep information secure and easy to communicate.

Using SMS for communication between Healthcare providers, HEPs and referral sites has become easy and quick. Access to patients’ records for Health facility staffs is now more convenient.