Assessing the contribution of HIS usability towards quality Health Care in Tanzania Public Regional Referral Hospitals

Abstract

The world is now emphasizing the equitable health services with no discrimination and access to all and is almost in the move to the Universal Health Insurance (UHI) to ensure that everyone is covered with health insurance and is confident to health services. Nevertheless, the question of quality health service is still cracking the heads of bighead states though the situation worse in the developing world countries. More studies agree that ICT has become a tool for dealing with poor health services worldwide. This study focused on assessing the contribution of ICT towards quality healthcare services to regional referral hospitals,a case study of Geita Regional Referral Hospital (GRRH). The study divided the research participants into two strata including service providers and service recipients to ensure balanced opinions. The participants were obtained using stratified simple random sampling technique. The mixed research approach was appliedin collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. Data were collected using both questionnaire and semi structured interview guide. The findings revealed that the use of ICT has improved the quality of healthcare at GRRH. Additionally, despite the existing challenges such as frequent power outages, lack of instant communication among service providers, lack of proper channel of communication between the hospital and community and insufficient trainingthe use of ICT in GRRH showed a remarkable contribution towards quality health care provisionincluding waiting time reduction, treatment cost reduction, easy and quick patients data retrieval, equitable service, people - centered or individual preferences, integrated and coordinated care, and efficient care by providing and maximizing the benefits of available resources.