From June 22nd to July 5th two Tragpi teams took turns in visiting several of the Tanzanian hospitals participating in the Benchmark project. Team 1 consisted of Holger Wagenaar and Kim Brons, Team 2 of Sanne Gorissen and Geertje Bevers. The hospitals visited are all situated in The Lake Zone (Lake Victoria) where the Benchmark project is concentrated. It turned out to be a very productive journey.

Team 1 focused on obtaining and validating management data from 2008. To this purpose meetings with various healthcare professionals (doctor in charge, medical director, matron or patron, head nurse and accountant) were conducted. For each hospital the specific needs for management information were determined, i.e. indicators for a shortage of (qualified) personnel.

Team 2 was very lucky to find all the necessary staff (doctor in charge, head nurse, accountant, statistics department and data registration) present in the three hospitals they visited. Management presentations were held to over 15 persons. Data such as occupancy rates at the various departments were presented to the hospital management teams. The collected hospital data provides information on resource utilization and insights into the management challenges the hospitals face. Furthermore, analysis of these data makes comparison to other hospitals that are participating in the benchmark possible.

The local coordinator at CSSC, Mecklina W. Isasi, stated: “Convince me with your data and we can get to work”.

A follow up of this project is planned for next August in The Netherlands. In the meantime in the hospitals that have been visited missing data is being collected. Furthermore, data will be collected for the participating hospitals that were not included in this visit. In August the results of the data collection and analysis will be presented to CSSC (Mecklina W. Isasi) and Cordaid (Frank van de Looij). This will result in adjustment of the 2007 Benchmark and definition of the 2008 Benchmark.