The Monitoring and Evaluation Manual for Health System Strengthening in Vietnam was developed by the Vietnam Health Strategy and Policy Institute (HSPI) with support from USAID’s Health Systems 20/20 project. The M&E Manual for HSS in Vietnam provides guidance and key indicators for provincial level managers to evaluate their HSS progress. Although these materials were created for provincial health managers in Vietnam, they could be adapted to suit other country contexts where health system assessments have been completed in the last 3-5 years. The key indicators included in the M&E Manual were chosen based on the following criteria: currently available from a routine reporting system; measurable/quantitative; easy for provinces to analyze; and based on existing HSA, WHO, and MOH indicator lists. The key indicators selected were vetted with provincial health authorities from two provinces and then pilot tested in a third province.
The M&E Manual presents a country centered approach which seeks to evaluate country progress on each indicator against current country achievements rather than relative to international averages or standards.
The M&E Manual for HSS in Vietnam has three major objectives:
- Obtain and use information about the current performance of Vietnam’s health system
- Introduce a set of indicators for evaluating performance of provincial level health system, and methods for using information in health planning at the provincial level
- Enhance management and organizational skills of Provincial Health Managers, including their capacity for planning, monitoring, supervising staff, and evaluating health system performance
The manual is organised into four chapters:
- Introduction
- Overview of Vietnam’s health system functions and national strategy
- Monitoring health system performance at the provincial level
- Using information for health planning
The M&E Manual for HSS in Vietnam was used to train provincial managers at a workshop held August 2012 in Hanoi. The training workshop is described on HSPI’s Website: http://en.hspi.org.vn/vclen/Training-course-Introduce-the-current-situation-of-Vietnams-health-system-and-the-methods-for-monitoring-evaluating–performance-of-provincial-health-system-t15966-7964.html