The Effect of Community Health Information System on Health Care Services Utilization in Rural Ethiopia
METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study measuring community-based health service use and HP based CHIS assessment from March to May 2019. We used descriptive statistics for CHIS implementation and service utilization and multilevel logistic regression to investigate the association of CHIS implementation with maternal and child health care services use.
RESULTS: Fifty five percent of the HPs were implementing CHIS. These HPs were using a paper-based household data collection tool called family folder (FF). Of the HPs, one third implemented lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) based data quality check and 60.4% documented and followed execution of decisions. Overall, among the eligible women, 40% used ANC, close to 50% of currently married women used ANC services; 28% of women that fall in the high wealth index category used PNC within 48 hours after delivery; and 86.1% of women who had at least a high school education delivered at a health facility. Implementation of CHIS and family folder utilization and conducting LQAS based data quality check in the HPs were significantly associated with increased odds of ANC, delivery, and vaccination services use.
CONCLUSION: We found that better implementation of CHIS was associated with better maternal and child health service use which implies that increasing utilization of CHIS at HPs will improve mother and child health service use.