A Helping Hand

Just over two years ago MIT Sloan School of Management sent a team of grad-students out to our clinic to do an assessment. They were working in partnership with the Global Health Delivery Project. They did an assessment of the clinic and helped with ideas on how to improve customer service. At that time they also made some reccomendations in regards to strategies that the clinic could implement to increase our self-sustainability. (In layman's terms they gave us ideas of how we could generate more money for the clinic and become less dependent on donors from the west.)

This week we were blessed with a follow-up visit from a student who is about to graduate from the program. Her name is Lillian and she has been a joy to have around. I have to confess that I was a little nervous about the follow-up visit. Would there be a noticeable difference from early 2009 to now?

We reviewed the report from two years ago and then evaluated the differences between now and then. I was blown away by how far we have come. Maybe because I'm here on a day-to-day basis I don't always see the changes as big. I'm also not a big numbers/stats person. So I do what needs to get done but don't dwell on it. But as we began to crunch numbers we found that the clinic is now 53% less dependent on outside funding than we were two years ago. And not only that, but we have added 4 staff members to our clinic since the initial survey! So we are now employing more Kenyan health providers, at the same time as we are requiring less in donations from the USA to keep the clinic running. It was a very exciting discovery!

We were also able to look at some areas that the clinic can continue to improve. Things like how to best utilize our staff during the down-seasons when we have a slower patient flow. As she made some recommendations I felt my creative juices starting to flow.

As Lillian and I sat in my office she asked me to share some of my dreams and visions for the clinic. We talked about how to use business strategies to continue to improve quality of care. She is planning to advocate for a future team or possibly even an intern to come and spend some more time in our clinic. Very exciting!