ASSESSING THECONTRIBUTION OF ICT TOWARDS QUALITY HEALTH CARES IN TANZANIA PUBLIC REGIONAL REFERRAL HOSPITAL

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 the poor health services in the continent (Khatun, 2015), (Manda, 2019), (Omondi, 2016) and (Kiema, 2017). This study focused on assessing the contribution of ICT towards quality healthcare services to regional referral hospitals a case study of GRRH. The study divided the research participants into two strata to ensure balanced opinions. The strata were service providers and service recipients. Service providers referred to GGRH employees while service recipients referred to patients or patients' relatives who attended at GRRH during data collection exercise of this study. Among the 153 participants 52% were service recipients and 48% were service providers to ensure fair responses and representation between the strata. The participants were obtained using stratified simple random sampling technique. The research took mixed research approach between quantitative and qualitative to enhance accuracy and reduce research time while it employed survey research design. The study data were collected using both questionnaire and semi structured interview questions. The findings revealed that the use of ICT has improved the quality of health care at GRRH. Regardless of the existing challenges, ICT usage showed a remarkable contribution towards quality health care provision at GRRH and definitely to all others RRHs that includes waiting time reduction, treatment cost reduction, easy and quick patients data retrieval, equitable service, people – centered or individual references, coordinated care and make available full range of health service throughout of the life course and efficient care by providing and maximizing the benefits of available resources.