Hospital management in the context of health sector reform: a planning model in Ethiopia

Through health sector reform in developing countries, Ministries of Health have sought to enhance health care through greater community governance and improved management effectiveness in their public hospitals. In this paper, we present a partnership-mentoring model for enhancing management capacity that has been piloted in Ethiopia and may be useful in other developing countries. The model included needs assessment and baseline evaluation using a hospital management indicator checklist, deployment of 24 Fellows (US and international hospital administrators) for 1 year to work as mentors with hospital management teams in 14 Ethiopian hospitals, continuing didactic and practical training in quality improvement methods for hospital management teams, and 24 management improvement projects to be completed during the year with plans for replication more broadly as appropriate. Surveys of Fellows and Ethiopian managers within the first quarter of onsite activity found high levels of trust in one another's abilities and intent to implement changes. The partnership-mentoring model promotes sustainability and may provide other countries with approaches for improving the quality of hospital care through improved hospital management.