title: Assessment of four common underfive children illnesses Routine Health Management Information System data for decision making at Ilemela Municipal Council, Northwest Tanzania: A case series analysis.
abstract: In 2012, The Tanzania Ministry Of Health introduced the revised Routine Health Management Information System (RHMIS) modules and registers, and introduced the open source software for data collection at the district council level. Despite a series of data collection tools revisions, the quality of data collated from both public and private primary health care facilities has not been investigated.
  
  
  
  A case series study design was conducted on underfive children outpatient registers and monthly reports on malaria, acute respiratory infections, acute diarrhoea and pneumonia from 10 randomly selected health facilities. The data was entered into excel software and exported to stata version 11 for analysis. The data was analyzed for completeness, timely report submission and reporting accuracy.
  
  
  
  The Study found that 62% of the expected data was complete. Around 40% of the facilities submitted reports on time. Private health facilities submitted monthly reports late compared to the public facilities (p-value=0.039). There was 26% over-reporting of diagnosis. Health centres tended to over-report more diagnoses by 11 times higher than the dispensaries. In addition, private owned health facilities tended to over-report more diagnoses by 6 times higher than public owned health facilities.
  
  
  
  The RHMIS data collected through out patients department (OPD) registers on four common underfive children's illnesses at ilemela municipality were of unsatisfactory quality in light of allocation of resource allocations in the comprehensive council health plan.
authors.affiliation: Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, Mwanza, Tanzania. Electronic address: skabaka@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Severin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kabakama
authors.affiliation: Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, Mwanza, Tanzania.
authors.forename: Sospatro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ngallaba
authors.affiliation: University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine, Canada.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Musto
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Montesanti
authors.affiliation: Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, Mwanza, Tanzania.
authors.forename: Eveline
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Konje
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Medical Research, Mwanza Campus, Tanzania.
authors.forename: Coleman
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kishamawe
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D000066491:Clinical Decision-Making; D016638:Critical Illness / Q000628:therapy*; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006268:Health Facilities; D006285:Health Planning; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D008331:Management Information Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010346:Patient Care Management / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012107:Research Design; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013636:Tanzania
keywords: Data quality; Routine Health Management Information System; Underfive children illnesses