Health Service Provision in Uganda: Assessing Facility Capacity, Costs of Care, and Patient Perspectives

Published October 2, 2014

This report draws from the Access, Bottlenecks, Costs, and Equity (ABCE) project in Uganda, a multi-pronged and multi-country research collaboration focused on understanding what drives and hinders health service provision. Results include the following:

  • Assessing the capacity of health facilities to provide services across different levels of care, such as physical infrastructure; human resources for health; and stocks of medicines and functional equipment
  • Comparing patient reports of their experiences at facilities, including wait time for care, interactions with providers, and expenses incurred during their visit
  • Tracking trends in patient volumes and spending across facility types
  • Quantifying the relationship between facility resources and production of services
  • Estimating facility costs associated with different types of services, with an expanded section on facility costs of HIV/AIDS care
  • Examining characteristics of facility-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs, including trends in drug regimens provided and patient retention
  • Initial findings from the Viral Load Pilot Study, through which the feasibility of using dried blood spot (DBS) technology to assess patient- and facility-level rates of HIV suppression was tested at a range of facilities.

This report represents the work of many field team members and researchers at IHME and the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration (IDRC), as well as contributions from the Ugandan Ministry of Health and Makerere University. Jane Achan of IDRC served as the in-country principal investigator. Funding for the project was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Disease Control Priorities Network (Investment # OPP51229).

Citation

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Health Service Provision in Uganda: Assessing Facility Capacity, Costs of Care, and Patient Perspectives. Seattle, WA: IHME, 2014.

Related