UNICEF
REOI/PH/2019/016: Prematurity Benefit Registry Development Request for EOI

Reference: REOI/PH/2019/016
Beneficiary countries: Philippines
Registration level: Basic
Published on: 25-Oct-2019
Deadline on: 08-Nov-2019 15:00 (GMT 8.00)

Description

UNICEF will support the Philippine government to bring to scale a comprehensive program for improving the care of premature and small newborns in the Philippines through a national health insurance benefit package. Jointly with PhilHealth and the Department of Health (DOH), the aim is to scale up the coverage of comprehensive, life-saving, evidence-based and equity-focused interventions for premature and small newborns at a national level. Twenty-seven (27) regional government hospitals and their service delivery networks will be contracted by PhilHealth to deliver the new benefit package. Saving Lives at Birth (SL@B) funding is matched 1:1 through funding contributions from both UNICEF Canada and UNICEF Philippines, while further leveraging current DOH investments in newborn care health infrastructure.

The “Z Benefit Package for Premature and Small Babies” was approved by PhilHealth in April 2017. However, bottlenecks in the roll-out and implementation were encountered resulting in lack of utilization of the benefit package to date. DOH and PhilHealth conducted a workshop to address identified bottlenecks in June 2018. Two major bottlenecks identified are the readiness of the hospitals to be contracted to deliver the services and the capacity of PhilHealth to rapidly contract hospitals based on the technical requirements of the new benefit package.

UNICEF Philippines will utilize a systems approach to strengthen both supply and demand sides to accelerate the roll-out of the benefit package. On the supply side, technical assistance will be provided to build up the technical and organizational capacity of 27 hospitals in the Philippines, including their service delivery networks, which can then be contracted by PhilHealth to provide care for premature and small newborns. On the demand side, the project will support PhilHealth regional offices via third party assessors for accreditation, or “contracting” of government health facilities to deliver services. Support for facilitation of hospitals is crucial to achieve high level of contracting rates for the benefit package within the project period.

The PhilHealth Policy requires hospital’s submission of information to track the utilization of the benefit package and to monitor outcomes and benefits. Similarly, the results framework of Saving Lives at Birth requires the reporting on a set of indicators. Previous observations from EENC monitoring is that hospitals usually have some form of patient registry where data is entered by Pediatric doctors-in-training or by encoders. Some of the data is collected to be submitted to the professional societies: Philippines Society for Newborn Medicine or the Philippines Obstetrics-Gynecology Society.

The project aims to support the 27 DoH-identified hospitals contracted or being assisted to be “contracted’ as a provider of the Z-benefit package for premature and small babies to submit information required for the PhilHealth registry and Saving Lives at Birth results framework, preferably using an open source software exportable as Excel file.

 

Specific Objectives:

  1. Conduct a landscape analysis of the current information system of the identified hospitals specifically on capacity to capture data for PhilHealth and DOH Saving Lives at Birth needs
  2. Develop technical design / program for use of identified hospitals to comply with data requirements that is user friendly and minimally disruptive to care provision, and forward compatible with the PhilHealth Z Benefits Information and Tracking System (ZBITS)
  3. Develop standards and guidelines for use of the system
  4. Orient, train and transfer technology to Philhealth staff and contracted hospitals
  5. Provide technical support to contracted hospitals for the first 5 months post installation