Abstract:
Background: Health workers collect and report data routinely. Studies show that very little of this vast amount of information is used for decisions and service improvement by those who are collecting the data and by local health management at health facility or County levels. Ideally, local data should be collected, analyzed and used in order to support local health management, health promotion and prevention and to improve local health service delivery. Significant resources have been invested on HMIS but little is known whether the available routine health information is used for decision making.
Objective: This study aims to assess the data use practice of health facilities and factors affecting data use: technical, organizational and behavioral factors, that influenced information use among health facilities in Addis Ababa, Bole sub city health centers, Ethiopia.
Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study design was used. All health center heads were included in the study and other respondents are selected by Probability, simple random sampling was used to select participants. Data were collected using a Self-administered questionnaire. A total of 213 health workers participated in the study with response rate of 92%. Descriptive statistic used to assess data use practice and bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors. Quantitative data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.
Results: The results showed 60.16% (95, CI:53.5%-66.7%) use of routine health information. The technical factors, data quality, training on data use for health workers, feedback mechanisms had statistically significant association to information use at health facility level for decision making (p < 0.05).
Conclusion & recommendation: The study demonstrated partial use of routine health information for decision making with interplay of technical, organizational, and behavioral determinants. In the view of the findings, this study recommends need for in coordination with the national level to provide training to improve health workers’ skills with specific focus on information use through on- job trainings, mentorship and enhance organizational context by providing resources that supports information use with targeted regular review meetings, feedback coupled with support supervision are also recommended.
.......................................... Thesis available at ACIPH Library