The role of contractual arrangements in improving health sector ...

Egypt
The Research Unit includes Family Health Fund staff and groups of university staff in
addition to short-term and long-term consultants from HSRP donors. The unit has focused its
activities on the issues affecting the implementation of the reform, including changes that
could be reflected in the purchasing activities of the Family Health Fund, provider, patient
perspective, cost and quality management. Results of these studies are available during the
negotiations with private and nongovernmental organization providers.
Which information systems are used by FHF to carry out the contract and assess
performance of the contracting private agency?
The National Information Centre of Health and Population at the Ministry of Health and
Population has designed the Patient-Based System (PBS) application, which requires a local
area network with a minimum of three workstations, one in each of the following: registration
and filing room, family physician clinic and pharmacy.
Sources of data for the PBS are the various forms enclosed in the family folder. The
main areas include but are not limited to:
essential family data
house status description
patient demographic data
encounter visits data
family planning visits
antenatal care visits
neonatal follow-up data
infants vaccination data
all pharmacy and drug store transactions data.
The system is extremely flexible and easily adapted to the conditions and needs of each
facility. This is achieved through flexible setup menus for all main variables within the
system.
The system produces weekly reports that contain the following data: number of visits
per physician; number of visits by age group; list of prescribed drugs; number of cases for a
specific diagnosis; number of laboratory investigations; number of X-ray investigations; and
number of referral cases.
BPS provides the Family Health Fund with all data needed to evaluate the performance
of health facilities. The system undergoes a continuous upgrading process according to
experience and feedback from field implementation.
What monitoring mechanisms and evaluation systems are in place for the Family Health
Fund and what challenges exist in this area?
Using the same monitoring and evaluation indicators in both the public and private
sectors allows fair competition between the two sectors and presents challenges in contractual
arrangements.
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