Quantitative Verification II Of SSQH Central and South-supported Health Facilities

The project's two objectives were to certify facility-based performance data reliability and community-level data reliability through periodic household surveys. The VRS Central and South project conducted a baseline assessment of service quality in all SSQH Central and South-supported health facilities in January 2015. A second service quality assessment, quantitative verification, and community verification were conducted in October 2015 for the quarter of January-March 2015. The third service quality assessment, quantitative verification, and community verification were conducted in April and May 2016 for the quarters of October-December 2014, April-June 2015, and July-September 2015. The quantitative verification aimed to compare data from reports submitted by health facilities to the Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (MSPP) with the content of registers or other data sources for the quarter of October-December 2014. The Results-Based Financing (RBF) model defined 17 quantitative indicators for dispensaries, health centers without beds, and health centers with beds, and a different set of 5 quantitative indicators for Community Reference Hospitals (HCR). The verificators recounted results from source documents and compared verified figures to reported figures for each quantitative indicator. The senior technical team provided extensive monitoring of the field teams during the fieldwork, offering on-the-spot guidance to verificators. The quantitative verification revealed important data quality issues. In less than 10% of the facilities, there was an exact match between recounted and reported values for certain indicators, including "Users of FP methods," "Postnatal Care Home Visits," "Pregnant women who received at least two doses of tetanus toxoid vaccine," "Children less than 5 years old who received Vitamin A," and "Fully immunized children (less than one year old)." However, there was an exact match between reported and verified numbers of HIV-positive pregnant women in care in 81% of the facilities. A large difference (more than 20%) was observed between verified and reported figures in most facilities for indicators such as "Number of watery diarrhea cases" (64% of facilities) and "Children receiving Vitamin A" (76% of facilities). These findings highlight the need for improved data quality and accuracy in health facilities supported by SSQH Central and South.