The effects of hospital reforms on the management of public hospitals in Tanzania: Challenges and lessons learnt.

Abstract

Although hospital reforms are being advocated internationally as part of a solution to hospital management problems in developing countries, studies have shown that they do give rise to some challenges. A study was undertaken that used in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and document review to examine hospital reforms. The article examines the effects of reforms on the management of Level II public hospitals in Tanzania and documents the related challenges and lessons Learnt. It is shown that hospital reforms have mixed effects in resource-strained hospitals, and that hospital reform actions may have replaced the bureaucratic inefficiencies associated with hospitals being managed from the central level (MoHSW) with the equally bureaucratic inefficiencies that characterize the management of these hospitals from a supposedly local level, the office of the Regional Administrative Secretary (RAS). Managing hospitals from this level seems to cause many hospital management problems to be left unattended.