Socio-demographic factors affecting data quality of routine health management information system (RHIS): Case of Uasin Gishu County referral hospital, Kenya

Abstract

To address pressing health issues, emphasis on global health agenda have been shifted from disease-specific approaches to strengthening health systems to provide quality patient care. The success of running health management systems is highly dependent on the knowledge, skills, motivation and deployment of people responsible for organizing and delivering health services. Therefore, effectiveness and efficiency in the management of today’s health systems depend on the well-being of its human resources. The existing crisis of human resource capabilities and non-alignment of existing policies to strengthen health systems is a tragedy in waiting. The study was carried out to determine how socio-demographic factors of health workers affected data quality. Cross-sectional study design was used. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire from a target population of 82 respondents. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare effect by the age of respondents on the quality of data with F-value of (224.51) at a p-value of 0.000 which is within the acceptable threshold value of 0.05. Finally, existing human resource policies need to be institutionalized to enhance strategic decision and policy development in improving health systems process design and implementation.

Keywords: Socio-demographic, data quality, routine, health management information system.