Background: Most managers in Ghana's health sector have access to the District Health Information Management System 2 (DHIMS2), a reporting system that the Ministry of Health (MOH) has deployed through the Center for Health Information Management (CHIM) as a foundation for management decision-making. However, there has been contention around the …
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Background: Most managers in Ghana's health sector have access to the District Health Information Management System 2 (DHIMS2), a reporting system that the Ministry of Health (MOH) has deployed through the Center for Health Information Management (CHIM) as a foundation for management decision-making. However, there has been contention around the DHIMS2 data's quality, undermining its usefulness. Despite the system's inadequate data quality, DHIMS2 continues to be the principal data source for decisions about national health policy. The quality of the data is thought to be much improved by using the DHIMS2 data at the facility level, where the primary data is gathered. Uncertainty surrounds how heavily core managers at healthcare facilities rely on DHIMS2 information when making management decisions.Objective: The study explored the level of DHIMS2 data usage by District Hospitals and Polyclinics core management teams for decision making, the challenges encountered by the core mangers and the relationship between the DHIMS data quality and DHIMS2 data use at the healthcare facilities in Ghana's Greater Accra region.Methodology: The study was conducted as a cross-sectional descriptive study using both quantitative and qualitative methods to solicit the experiences and challenges of facility core managers on the use of DHIMS2 software for making decisions in the management of their health facilities.Findings: The study showed that the data accuracy ratio of DHIMS2 data and the reported data for Malaria positive cases at the selected health facilities was generally high with percentages accuracy between 100% and 101.5% for both District Hospitals and Polyclinics in the region. This shows that there was under reporting of Positive Malaria data in the first quarter of 2022 for Anyaa Polyclinic whiles the other selected health facilities had no discrepancies for the same period. However, the data accuracy ratio for Malaria positive cases for between the facilities registers for capturing the source data and the standard summary monthly reporting forms were 104.1 and 158.8% for Kaneshie Polyclinic and Ga West Municipal Hospital which shows under reporting of the Malaria positives cases in the first quarter of 2022.Most of the facilities core management team members had access to the DHIMS2 system to access data for decision making which constitutes 70% of the respondents. The challenges mentioned by the majority are inadequate training on navigating the platform such as retrieving data, analysis, and interpretation. The study also found that there was no relationship between data use and data quality at the health facilities. Thus, an increase in data quality does not result in an increase in data use. It was also found that the availability of basic equipment for data capture and access such as internet connectivity, refresher training and regular readily available support for facility core managers affect the use of DHIMS2 data use for decision-making. Conclusion: Generally, most of the study participants had been trained to access information on DHIMS 2, however, there’s the need to develop the capacity of the remaining few and do intermittent refresher training. Managers indicated the many uses of the information they extract from DHIMS 2, if there are more uses not privy to these managers, they should be made aware of them. The availability of high-quality data alone does not directly influence the use of the data for decision-making. Suggestions by facility core managers on the training needs of staff should be duly implemented.
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