Perceptions of and practical experience with the National Surveillance Centre in managing medicines availability amongst users within public healthcare facilities in South Africa: findings and implications.

Falco, Marco F.; Meyer, Johanna C.; Putter, Susan J.; Underwood, Richard S.; Nabayiga, Hellen; Opanga, Sylvia; Miljković, Nenad; Nyathi, Ephodia; Godman, Brian

Abstract

The introduction of the National Surveillance Centre (NSC) has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of managing medicines availability within the public healthcare system in South Africa. However, at present, there is limited data regarding the perceptions among users of the NSC and challenges that need addressing. A descriptive quantitative study was performed among all registered active NSC users between August and November 2022. Overall, 114/169 users responded to a custom-developed, self-administered questionnaire (67.5% response rate). Most respondents used the Stock Visibility System (SVS) National Department of Health (NDoH) (66.7% for medicines and 51.8% for personal protective equipment (PPE) or SVS COVID-19 (64.9% for COVID-19 vaccines) or RxSolution (57.0% manual report or 42.1% application programming interface (API)) for reporting medicines, PPE, and COVID-19 vaccines to the NSC and were confident in the accuracy of the reported data. Most respondents focused on both medicines availability and reporting compliance when accessing the NSC, with the integrated medicines availability dashboard and the COVID-19 vaccine dashboard being the most popular. The respondents believed the NSC allowed ease of access to data and improved data quality to better monitor medicines availability and use. Identified areas for improvement included improving internet connectivity, retraining some users, standardising the dashboards, adding more data points and reports, and expanding user adoption by increasing licence limits. Overall, this study found that the NSC in South Africa provides an effective solution for monitoring and improving medicines availability.

Citation

FALCO, M.F., MEYER, J.C., PUTTER, S.J., UNDERWOOD, R.S., NABAYIGA, H., OPANGA, S., MILJKOVIĆ, N., NYATHI, E. and GODMAN, B. 2023. Perceptions of and practical experience with the National Surveillance Centre in managing medicines availability amongst users within public healthcare facilities in South Africa: findings and implications. Healthcare [online], 11(13), article number 1838. Available from: https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11131838

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 14, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jun 24, 2023
• Publication Date: Jul 15, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 20, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: May 20, 2024
• Journal: Healthcare
• Electronic ISSN: 2227-9032
• Publisher: MDPI
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 13
• Article Number: 1838
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11131838
• Keywords: Public healthcare sector; South Africa; National surveillance centre; Medicines availability; Health systems strengthening; Visibility and analytics network-operating model; Medicine value chain; RxSolution; Stock visibility system
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/2044201